A Breakdown in the Good of Order: An Analysis of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis Informed by Bernard Lonergan's Notion of the Human Good

• Main Author: Cioni, Joseph
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Boston College 2012
• Subjects: Bernard Lonergan; Mortgage Crisis; Subprime
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/2888

Thesis advisor: Patrick H. Byrne === In this dissertation, I attempt to contribute to Lonergan scholarship by bringing greater clarity to his notions of general and group bias. By applying these notions to a concrete event, the subprime mortgage crisis, I intend to shed light on their meaning and significance in a new way. Over the course of this dissertation, I will investigate and employ other theoretical tools that Lonergan provides, such as his notions of transcendental method, self-appropriation, common sense, and values, and especially the destructive impact of group and general bias upon the good of order. The theoretical ideas that are examined in this dissertation have a heuristic value, for they have the potential to help individuals notice areas and respond to issues that might have otherwise been overlooked. The subprime mortgage crisis, which arguably began when American house prices dropped in July of 2006, was the product of an accumulation of biased decisions over time. Lonergan's notion of the general bias of common sense afflicted many of the central parties involved in the subprime mortgage market leading up to the crisis, prompting them to conclude that house prices would interminably rise. Institutional relationships that were impaired by this biased orientation toward the housing market came to be further plagued by Lonergan's notion of group bias. Ultimately, I argue that subprime mortgage crisis was a manifestation of a breakdown in the good of order, which is a component of Lonergan's notion of the invariant structure of the human good. Chapter One consists of a presentation and explication of the set of Lonergan's theoretical tools that are utilized in this study. The chapter begins with an exploration of his transcendental method and then proceeds with a discussion that includes his notions of cognitional structure, self-appropriation, common sense, values and judgments of value, conversion, self-transcendence, authenticity, bias, and the invariant structure of the human good. Chapter Two serves a bridge between these theoretical terms and my analysis of the parties that were involved in the subprime mortgage crisis. In addition to arguing that the general bias of common sense distorted the decision making processes of many of the significant players in the subprime mortgage market, I will also contend that group bias was operative leading up to and during this crisis. The emphasis in this latter section will be on instances of "co-opted" group bias, or arrangements in which different parties cooperated with one another in mutually advantageous ways in the short-term, but to the detriment of the good of order. Chapters Three through Six each focus on one of the parties that played an instrumental role in the development and outbreak of the subprime mortgage crisis: subprime lenders (Chapter Three), arrangers (Chapter Four), credit rating agencies (Chapter Five), and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (Chapter Six). I examine key regulatory relationships in these chapters as well and note that, in many cases, they were ensnared by general and group bias. My concluding analysis is that, as an accumulation of biased decisions, the subprime mortgage crisis was an avoidable outcome, for individual submission to bias is not inevitable. === Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. === Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. === Discipline: Philosophy.