The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) uses lax accounting standards that obscure the fact that it is deeply insolvent, with a looming shortfall of tens of billions of dollars that American taxpayers will have to make up.

At this AEI book forum, Jeffrey Friedman will present his book’s arguments, followed by comments from AEI’s Peter Wallison and Alex Pollock and a general discussion.

When the bubble deflated in 2007, an unprecedented number of weak mortgages went into default - those that were held or guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie, and those that had been securitized by Wall Street. This drove down housing prices and threw Fannie and Freddie into insolvency. 

The Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee (SFRC) will discuss the latest Dodd-Frank Act developments, Basel III standards for large institutions, living wills for complex financial institutions, and Securities and Exchange Commission accounting and policy initiatives.

The underlying idea—that financial institutions are "interconnected" and the failure of one will drag down others - is not implausible. But like so much else that underlies the Dodd-Frank Act, it was accepted as true—and acted upon—without much evidence, or even much thought.

Here we go again.  A series of uncoordinated government policies are once more setting up the U.S. banking system for major losses and possibly another financial crisis.  

A new report outlines fifty-seven specific recommendations for restructuring financial regulation.

One of the myths that has grown up around the budget debate is that tax increases and spending cuts are just two sides of the same coin. Every week, it seems, some well-meaning group calls on the Republicans and Democrats to agree to a simple formula: the Republicans would agree to tax increases and the Democrats to spending cuts. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as that.