A Lot More
Observations on housing's wreckage and recovery
Fannie and Freddie 4evah
Wednesday sees the House Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Capital Markets hold a hearing on “The Present Condition and Future Status of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.” The lineup includes the usual industry suspects (mortgage bankers, Realtors, homebuilders), a requisite but reasonably sane kill-the-agencies voice, NYU Stern School’s Lawrence White, and Susan Wachter from Wharton, whose wonderfully titled paper “Explaining the United States’ Uniquely Bad Housing Market” provides an authoritative insta-account of how Fannie and Freddie made mortgage securitization work and Wall Street played the game so wretchedly wrong. Congress will do well to listen to Wachter.
How the homes we live in turned into the monsters that ate our economy and the United States became a nation obsessed with real estate.
The Latest
Organizations that matter
- Affordable Housing Centers of America
- Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute
- Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program
- Center for Budget and Policy Priorities
- Center for Responsible Lending
- Demos
- Drum Major Institute
- Joint Center for Housing Studies
- Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
- National Consumer Law Center
- National Housing Institute
- National Housing Trust
- National Low Income Housing Coalition
- National Training and Information Center
- Natn’l Community Reinvestment Coalition
- NEDAP
- New America Foundation
- PolicyLink
- Pratt Center for Community Development
- Revson Fellowship
- Smart Growth America
What Alyssa reads
- Baseline Scenario
- Ben Smith
- Bloomberg News
- Calculated Risk
- City Limits
- Consumer Law and Policy Blog
- Doug Henwood
- Felix Salmon
- Galleycat
- Housing Wire
- Mother Jones
- Next American City
- Paul Krugman
- PolicyCents
- Ryan Avent
- Shelterforce
- Street Level
- Talking Points Memo
- The Audit
- The Balance Sheet
- The Big Picture
Tags
American Prospect Ameriquest Andrew Cuomo Atlanta Barney Frank Bloomberg News Bloomsbury Bush Business Week California Clinton Community Reinvestment Act Consumer Financial Protection Agency Dean Baker Elizabeth Warren Fannie Mae Felix Salmon FHA financial stability foreclosures Freddie Mac Gretchen Morgenson Home Mortgage Disclosure Act homeownership Larry Summers loan modifications media mortgage-backed securities Mortgage Bankers Association mortgage brokers mortgage fraud mortgage suicides New York Times Obama Paul Krugman publishing Rick Santelli Salon securitization subprime tenants Texas The Big Money Timothy Geithner Wall Street Journal