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...

At this event, panelists discussed how to prevent the next real estate bubble.

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.

The government takeover of Fannie and Freddie was necessary because of their massive losses on more than $1 trillion of subprime and Alt-A investments.

Activists view state predatory lending laws as a template for aggressive federal intervention. Industries are looking to the federal government to choke off state and local experimentation.

There needs to be a more refined system of risk weights and the use of ratings by private credit-rating agencies to assign risk weights to classes of assets or activities.