The flood of home foreclosures that followed the large economic recess

Parallel: caused housing prices to ..... leading to ....
--> A, B & C are out

"and, fears" will take away the parallelism followed. So, E is out

IMO Option D

which lead/led vs leading split: "which" modifies preceding noun, not the case here, so A, B, and C are out.

Between D and E: a comma is not required to separate two items of the list, so D works better.

MEANING
The flood of foreclosures caused prices to drop precipitously, leading to write downs and [to] fears of a spiral.

(E) "and, fears" breaks ellipsis and parallelism, we cannot consider "and [to] fears".

Ans (D)

which lead to the writing down of mortgage backed securities, and, to fears of a Great Depression-like downward spiral................here which refers to only preceeding noun....which is incorrect

So A,B,C are incorrect
(D) leading to write downs of mortgage backed securities and fears of a Great Depression-like downward spiral........Correct
(E) leading to write downs of mortgage backed securities and, fears of a Great Depression-like downward spiral........incorrect

OA:D

The right answer is option D.

Meaning: The flood of home foreclosures caused housing prices to drop precipitously. This led to the write-downs of mortgaged-backed securities and fears of a Great Depression-like downward spiral. What led to the write-downs and fears? The housing prices caused by flood of home foreclosures. So essentially, the write-downs and fears are the results of the preceding clause, The flood of home foreclosures that followed the large economic recession in 2008 caused housing prices to drop precipitously. Based on this understanding, a which clause is not appropriate to convey the result of an action in a sentence. We need a verb-ing modifier. We can, therefore, eliminate options A, B, and C.

Between D and E, the comma after and in E is not necessary. We need to express the write-downs of mortgaged-backed securities and fears of a Great Depression-like downward spiral to be parallel to each other. Option D rightly expresses parallelism in the write-downs and fears in parallel. The answer is, therefore, option D in my view.

The flood of home foreclosures that followed the large economic recession in 2008 caused housing prices to drop precipitously, which lead to the writing down of mortgage-backed securities, and, to fears of a Great Depression-like downward spiral.

(A) which lead to the writing down of mortgage backed securities, and, to fears of a Great Depression-like downward spiral
(B) which led to the write downs of mortgage backed securities and fears of a Great Depression-like downward spiral
(C) which lead to the write down of mortgage backed securities and the fears of a Great Depression-like downward spiral
(D) leading to write downs of mortgage backed securities and fears of a Great Depression-like downward spiral
(E) leading to write downs of mortgage backed securities and, fears of a Great Depression-like downward spiral

The flood of home foreclosures that followed the large economic recession in 2008 caused housing prices to drop precipitously, which lead to the writing down of mortgage backed securities, and, to fears of a Great Depression-like downward spiral.

(A) which lead to the writing down of mortgage backed securities, and, to fears of a Great Depression-like downward spiral> not parallel
(B) which led to the write downs of mortgage backed securities and fears of a Great Depression-like downward spiral > which should denote drop in housing price, but here it is meaning precipitously, not correct.
C) which lead to the write down of mortgage backed securities and the fears of a Great Depression-like downward spiral > except the problem with antecedent of 'which', seems parallel but adding 'the' before fears makes it awkward.
(D) leading to write downs of mortgage backed securities and fears of a Great Depression-like downward spiral > precise and correct.
(E) leading to write downs of mortgage backed securities and, fears of a Great Depression-like downward spiral> not parallel because of ',' after.
IMHO D is the answer.

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION

The main issue in this sentence deals with ensuring a concise parallelism in listing the two results of the economic problems.

(1) The economic trouble led to two actions, which should be parallel: (a) write downs of mortgage backed securities (b) fears of a Great Depression-like spiral.

A. the phrase the writing down of..., and, to fears of... is not parallel
B. the phrase the write downs of... and fears of is not parallel as the first the should be removed
C. although this phrase is technically parallel, the inclusion of the before each result makes the sentence awkward and not concise
D. the phrase write downs of... and fears of... is both concise and parallel
E. the phrase write downs of... and, fears of... is not parallel

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