A potential European banking crisis would spill over to the US financial system, which has very close links to the European banking system.

The financial crisis was not caused by the disorderly bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, but by a common shock to all firms: the decline in mortgage values after the housing bubble collapsed, exacerbated by mark-to-market accounting.

In the latest AEI Financial Services Outlook, AEI scholar Peter Wallison, who served as a member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, explains that we are beginning to see the outlines of the housing finance system envisaged by the new Dodd-Frank Act (DFA).

Friedrich Hayek, the famous free-market critic of central planning, were he alive today, would have the same views as US conservatives about ObamaCare and the Dodd-Frank Act.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission only produced a narrative about the financial crisis, not a coherent description of what caused the financial crisis.

In the latest Financial Services Outlook, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) housing experts Peter Wallison and Edward Pinto explain how decades of government intervention have gravely harmed America's housing market.

AEI Resident fellow Alex Pollock examines past sovereign debt crises, especially the European crisis of the 1920s, in the context of the current economic situation for a piece in the latest Financial Services Outlook and the Wall Street Journal.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said that the administration wants to bring private capital back to the housing finance market. But without reopening Dodd-Frank and reigning in the Federal Housing Administrations (FHA), winding down government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will not be enough to allow the private market to return