Summary Corrections - Before and After

What I learned from correcting my summary of the video The Crisis of Credit Visualized are the following aspects:

• CONDENSING: Even if the paragraph is only 200 words, there are probably always one or two expressions that can (and need to) be condensed.

• PARAGRAPHS: The first and the last sentence always need to be connected in terms of content; if they are not, several paragraphs are needed.

• PROOFREADING: It might help to proofread the text several times, each time concentrating on a different aspect, e.g. spelling, grammar and content, in order to spot the mistakes without being blinded by other aspects of the text.

 But have a look for yourself:

Original Version

Corrected Version

In his online video “The Crisis of Credit Visualized”, Jonathan Jarvis shows reasons, course ans repercussions (1) of the 2008 financial crisis. Prior to 9/11 and the .com crash, investors primarily purchased treasury bonds for their high interest rates. However, after the crash, these dropped to only one percent (2), leading banks to borrowing (3) money for leverage to amplify their capital. Aiming at greater profits, bankers then bought mortgages from homeowners via brokers. These were aggregated to (4) Collateralized Debt Obligation (5) (CDO), which is categorized into "safe”, "okay" and "risky" (6) mortgages. The triple-A rated safe (7) CDOs are insured by Credit Default Swap (5), making them lucrative for investors, while bankers mostly purchased the triple-B rated ones, and the risky (7) ones were sold to hedge funds. (8) However, when demand further increased, bankers also bought unsafe sub-prime mortgages. If homeowners defaulted, the banker would receive the house for further selling (9). As innumerable homeowners gradually defaulted, the supply of houses was too high, causing prices as well as the value of houses (10) to plummet. Consequently, homeowners stopped paying their mortgage, leaving bankers without income. With nobody buying and selling CDOs, the financial system froze. Therefore, not only did the 2008 crisis affect the financial system, but everyone.

In his online video “The Crisis of Credit Visualized”, Jonathan Jarvis explains the 2008 financial crisis. Prior to 9/11 and the .com crash, investors primarily purchased treasury bonds for their high interest rates. However, after the crash, these dropped to only one percent in order to keep the economy strong, leading banks to borrow money for leverage to amplify their capital. Aiming at greater profits, bankers then bought mortgages from homeowners via brokers. These were aggregated into Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO), which are categorized into AAA, BBB and unrated mortgages. AAA CDOs are insured by Credit Default Swaps, making them attractive for investors, while bankers mostly purchased BBB CDOs, and the unrated ones were sold to hedge funds.  However, when demand further increased, bankers also bought unsafe sub-prime mortgages. If homeowners defaulted, the banker would receive the house to resell. As innumerable homeowners gradually defaulted, the supply of houses was too high, causing prices to plummet. Consequently, homeowners stopped paying their mortgage, leaving bankers without income. With nobody buying and selling CDOs, the financial system froze. Therefore, not only did the 2008 crisis affect the financial system, but everyone.

Explanations:

1. This can clearly be condensed.

2. The reason is missing.

3. Proofreading should have eliminated this mistake.

4. Wrong preposition

5. Spelling mistake: Collateralized Debt Obligations and Credit Default Swaps are plural.

6. The terms I used are rather informal, so they should be exchanged for more formal words.

7. Again, I used pretty long and complicated terms to say what I could have said in a much easier way.

8. If you check whether there’s a connection between the first and the last sentence of this paragraph, you will hardly find any – meaning that the paragraph doesn’t work and needs to be split.

9. This is another expression that needs condensing.

10. Here, I said exactly the same thing twice, just using different (and redundant) words.