Government sponsored enterprises could be reformed using a specific plan that ensures the availability of mortgage financing while focusing the government on its relative strengths of providing a backstop against financial catastrophes and directing appropriate subsidies for affordable housing.

Joseph Antos' analysis of Medicare's fiscal crisis and reform options that could make the program sustatainable; a response to a request from 16 health professionals elected to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives for public comment on Medicare reform. 

How and why did the Canadian and U.S. housing finance markets react differently to the international financial crises of 2007-2009?

The fat years of the housing bubble lasted from 1999 to 2006 - seven years. The bubble was deflating by the beginning of 2007 and collapsed into the panics of 2007-09. Since then we have been struggling in its deflated wake. If we get the Biblical sum of seven lean years, the housing and related debt markets will bottom in 2013 - not a bad forecast. 

If there is one success story since 9/11, it has been the efforts to combat terror finance. If military action is sometimes akin to conducting surgery with an axe, efforts to dry up sources of funding are like wielding a scalpel.

Longstanding policies that were intended to promote confidence in the independence of regulatory decision-making have now been wiped away by the Dodd-Frank act, which has in effect placed all the financial regulators under the direction of the Treasury secretary.

Europe’s current debt crises are a consequence of a region-wide crisis of the welfare state, whose vast promised benefits voters demand, yet are unwilling to finance through self-taxation.

Growth is slowing, but the politicians at fault haven't heeded calls for serious reform.