Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Causes of the Financial Crisis of 2007-2009


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. A rename could be considered, but that should be discussed elsewhere at this point. – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 16:27, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Causes of the Financial Crisis of 2007-2009

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This page has been created by one editor to represent the causes of the Subprime mortgage crisis and the Financial Crisis of 2007-2009. The article is loaded with ambiguity, selected speech excerpts, original research and bias. My personal opinion is that the article serves no purpose other than to promote user:Farcaster's opinions. Scribner (talk) 07:24, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. As the article on Financial crisis of 2007–2010 shows, this is a complicated phenomenon that is best covered by a large series of articles, and this article is a part of that series.  While the prose could be tightened up, this article seems reasonably informative and referenced.  The nomination would appear to involve a content dispute and makes no case for deletion. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 14:02, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment The article is not part of a series. What gave you that impression?  It's obvious you've voted on a topic with which you're unfamiliar.  There's been talk about merging to clean this mess up.  About 80% of this article has been cherry picked from the Subprime mortgage crisis article.  Scribner (talk) 21:04, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment1 Might be an attempt to split the WP articles mentioned (plus Late_2000s_recession plus certainly some more); the see-also templates included in the articles make me think that way. However, the resulting article duplicates the existing ones in more than one place and repeats the same graphs, quotes and phrases. The whole set of contributions around the financial crisis requires cleanup and some different viewpoints but I wouldn't go as far as calling it OR, or even POV. --Pgallert (talk) 14:16, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment2 Sorry to say that but looking at the recent edit history of User:Scribner I smell some WP:IDONTLIKEIT in this submission. He is heavily involved in the topic and might for this reason not be the most impartial of editors for this particular topic. No offense intended, of course. --Pgallert (talk) 14:16, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 *  Keep - see my comments on Angelo page. This whole area is littered with biased sources and "cause and effect" determined by self-interest, and NOT appeal to reality. OK, so I have had more than normal alcohol to drink with lunch( no joke), but this is the only way I can address this joke topic-anyone who had more respect for reality than "Experts" saw this coming years ago. Anything that cites any reasonable sources, other htan NAR, or says that the issue is complex or confusing, as the first paragraph DOES,  needs to be DISCUSSED, not deleted. The national association of realtors and related groups have a lot of money and interest and simple "obvious to non-expert" commentary would deflate normally "reliable" sources as being driven by ad dollars, not real cause-and-effect attribution. If you have ANY respect for intellectual freedom, edit this page do not delete it. On a larger issue, modern attitudes are shaped by "positive thinking" and simply put IMO,  it was self-deception that lead to this mess and it is antithetical to reality testing or science.  Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 17:00, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. I'm with Smerdis/Ihcoyc.— S Marshall   Talk / Cont  17:04, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. Since we have several very long articles which are largely duplicates of one another on the financial crisis, it would be advantageous to separate out the sections on the causes of the crisis and consolidate (merge) them into one subordinate article. This is that article. We should beef this one up and replace the sections on causation in the major articles by short summaries with a link to this article. JRSpriggs (talk) 20:12, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. This article is the causes of... written by one individual, with a POV slant towards conservatism that's extreme. Wiki makes history for itself in claiming the cause of the subprime crisis is low American savings rates and a trade imbalance.  Laughable.  Scribner (talk) 21:49, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. That "one individual" is who has been (recently) the most energetic editor improving the articles on the current recession. I do not consider him conservative. In fact, before the far-left Scribner appeared, I considered Farcaster to be liberal. However, I believe that Farcaster is trying to be even-handed and ensure that all view points are fairly represented. JRSpriggs (talk) 04:07, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Examples of bias "Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac...They only exist because Congress made them to further its desire to distort the economy by getting mortgages for people who do not deserve them. JRSpriggs (talk) 10:26, 12 July 2009 (UTC)" This comment by JRSpriggs is typical of the mindset of the the article.  Farcaster refers to homes in  foreclosure as "McMansions".  Bias aside, the article is incomplete, omits key events and places emphasis on events that whitewash mainstream consensus, and omits altogether worldview opinions.  Scribner (talk) 16:46, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
 * A Thought : To which I would suggest, " FNM and FRE were created by congress to give loans to people who wouldn't have any other source[]. Some view this as a good way to help poor people[], others have labelled it as an economic distortion to give money to people who ( choose how loaded a term the sources will support)[]. " Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 01:16, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. The quotation from me given by Scribner is from my edit which was on the talk page of a different (but related) article. I have not denied that my views would be considered very far right by most people. But I did not put this into the article. Nor are Farcaster's views identical to mine as Scribner seems to be implying. If I had written the whole article, it would be quite different than it is. JRSpriggs (talk) 11:58, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, cause and effect doesn't apply here LOL  - Yes, "causes of" sounds like inherently an original analytical work. But, the fact is there are many causes discussed in secondary sources and so a topic of this type, while maybe more appropriately thought of as a list, is quite reasonable. Scribner's comment would only be a cause for action if you thought that "causes" or the crisis didn't exist or were beyond human ability to know. A list of hypothesized causes from reliable sources, and all lists start with one entry, is no different here than with other controversial topics. I personally don't think any of these secondary sources are other than laughable, but I won't bother putting primary sources here since everyone just wants to argue over which biased version should get the most weight. Ask yourself about the kinds of things that determine a sustainable price for a home and see if this is really not self-evident and would admit "obvious" comments from primary sources ( if the US census says "X" and the IRS say "Y" but real estate pro's say "real estate only goes up", which primary sources do you need to cite to avoid doing "OR" to say something isn't right here? This whole topic is a joke). Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 00:03, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep but rename to Causes of the U.S. Financial Crisis of 2007-2009. Article and its sources are irretrievably US-centric. Causes and effects of financial crisis outside of USA are hardly mentioned. Gandalf61 (talk) 08:31, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Same opinion: Keep but rename to Causes of the U.S. Financial Crisis of 2007-2009.
 * Keep--as aside, I don't think it should be renamed to specify U.S., since the economic crisis is a global phenomenon, though largely concentrated/started in the U.s. I would rename it to a more neutral Background of the Financial Crisis of 2007-2009. C RETOG 8(t/c) 16:04, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment on renaming to Background and U.S. are both good ideas.  The Financial Crisis of 2007-2009 is a world-wide recession, the Subprime mortgage crisis is specific to the U.S. in name.  This article does not represent the causes of either article.  Thanks to all who have taken the time to comment  Scribner (talk) 16:46, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment : Some causations inferred from the temporally proximal antecedents are documented conjectures from reliable sources and others are logical ( much as a power grid tripping in response to a small problem or Chernobyl, you can point to some isolated items as logical consquences. In this, maybe as with WW-I, written agreements may be factors, for example, " if default rate on X goes up, we can collect Y from Z immediately" in some binding agreement would suggest that if Z ceded Y to author after X default rate goes up, then the X default rate could have helped to cause Z to become insolvent. QED. LOL. The reality of course is that "default rates on X go up" because there is no underlying economic basis on which to believe in the "optimistic" attitudes that would presumably accompany prudent lending. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 17:05, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment Nerdseeksblonde, this isn't a forum. The causes of the subprime crisis are pretty well established and the U.S. trade imbalance and low savings among Americans are a whitewash.  You should ask yourself why our article doesn't resemble a similar source's.  Scribner (talk) 23:36, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep, Rename To a title to be decided by talk page discussion or RFC. Suggest "Financial Crisis of 2007-2009 (Economic theories of causes)" Reasons for keep, per nomination. WP:DELETION makes no mention of WP:OR or WP:POV, only WP:N; these are problems to be fixed internally (by editing the main article or discussing on the talk page. The fact that these are continually cited in AfDs as reason for deletion is the opposite of an excuse, it just shows the extent of the problem. If one wants articles on WP to be good articles, mainspace, talk page, and RFC are great places to start. AfD as critique is not acceptable. Anarchangel (talk) 01:05, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Adding Ideas : Well, we need to get some idea on the different perspectives if you don't want one to dominate inappropriately compared to secondary source coverage. So, if you have alt views then I guess we can do a source count to determine mainstream. In fact, however, a home is fairly valued based largely on the economic benefit related to the area ( and supply demand etc). Home price appreciation would have been justified in areas with new industries ( this is "obvious" on case studies ) where there is economic benefit associated with being nearby. So, to the extent that foreign factories replaced domestic production ( trade balance), then maybe you ( or someone ) could make this a link in a causal chain. You can call it whitewash I guess and I agree the mainstream is probably no too candid, which is why I'm not offering to contribute, but you don't need to import if you have a domestic factory in your neighborhood and if you don't make enough to save that is less to put towards a home. A home is a consumable item that normally just happens to last a while. With a growing population you can generally expect more demand later and may see appreciation. In the absence of growth, there is only so much economic value it has- the dollar value can be changed somewhat by value of the currency etc etc etc... You can call this helping people, but it just let more middle Americans who missed the tech bubble get involved in an asset bubble ( had those tech stocks made high value product, it would not have been a bubble). Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 01:11, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.