Can policymakers and private investors reprivatize American finance? Should they? If so, how?

In less than twenty-five years, government “affordable housing” and other housing policies have turned a healthy market into a financial ruin. Until Fannie and Freddie’s market dominance and the government’s role in the housing finance system are substantially reduced or eliminated, the United States will continue to have an inferior and unstable housing market.

James Grant--one of the most skeptical, insightful, and witty writers on the adventures and foibles of financial markets--chronicles the various epidemics of investment excesses that have erupted over the past decade in his new book, Mr. Market Miscalculates (Axios Press, November 2008). Grant investigates, among other topics, mass psychology in...

For many years, community financial institutions have been denied fair and equal access to the secondary market. Banks prosper by making prudent loans with an adequate return and maintaining a reasonable cost structure. Today 97 percent of our banks are community banks and they are increasingly finding this business model under siege.

Since the mortgage meltdown began in the summer of 2007, many observers have commented that government policy has seemed to lag events. Predictions about the scope of the problems in the housing and mortgage markets, and particularly how they might affect the health of the financial system, have consistently been...

Improved mortgage disclosure to consumers is an important goal everyone can agree on--especially in the wake of the subprime mortgage bust, in which many defaulting borrowers appear not to have understood the obligations they were undertaking. A good mortgage finance system requires that borrowers understand how the loan will work,...

Since the beginning of the subprime meltdown, policymakers, housing experts, and economists have been looking for data that would enable them to predict housing price declines for individual states and for the nation as a whole. To date, no academic study has offered a quantitative basis for evaluating the potential...

Low mortgage underwriting standards were partially responsible for the collapse of the housing market. Now that standards have been raised to prevent another collapse, there are calls to bring them back down again.