Posts Tagged ‘The American Prospect’

All real estate is local

In the May issue of The American Prospect, I contribute one of “Five Ways of Looking at Risk,” pointing out that the basic set-up of the mortgage-backed securities market — a global market in debt-trading, supporting a product, real estate, that is rooted to a specific location — poses inherent risks that the market simply wasn’t built to deal with. I suggest some ways that home lending could once again become a local business while still taking advantage of the financial markets, and am sure there are many other possible models — someway, somehow, the government mortgage market reform project on the horizon will have to take on this challenge.