This small selection is enough to demonstrate the wide range of reforms that have been launched – from banks to insurers to individual financial instruments. This is both right and necessary. However there is a danger that we may lose overview of the financial system as a whole by pushing ahead with sector-specific regulations largely independently of one another.
This example of how standardization helped jump-start a marketplace may provide insights regarding the current challenges in the subprime markets as well as the development of the community development investment market. As of January 2008, the most recent month for which data are available, about 24 percent of subprime adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) were 90 or more days delinquent, twice the level one year earlier.