The U.S. subprime mortgage problem  I will move on to the second factor causing sluggish growth in Japan's economy: the disruptions in global financial markets and the slowdown in the global economy. Roughly one year has passed since the U.S. subprime mortgage problem emerged, and the nature of this problem seems to have evolved over time.
The first stage was the time of "liquidity constraints." Conduits and aggregators of securitized products including those backed by subprime mortgages faced difficulties in raising funds from the market, as a result of large declines in the prices of such products.