The Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee works to identify and analyze developing trends and ongoing events that promise to affect the efficiency and safe operation of sectors of the financial services industry; explore the spectrum of short- and long-term implications of emerging problems and policy changes; help develop private, regulatory and legislative responses to such problems that promote efficiency and safety and further the public interest; and to assess and respond to proposed and actual public policy initiatives with respect to the impact on the public interest.

Over the past few months, there has been a marked intensification of the Eurozone debt crisis that could have major implications for the United States economy in 2012.

To make financial markets less vulnerable to their inevitable cycles, it is an essential responsibility of both private financial actors and government officials to study, develop and implement countercyclical approaches.

In 2011, the Government Mortgage Complex accounted for 88 percent of all first-mortgage originations in the United States, with the government also controlling an estimated 90 percent of the student loan market. The government’s growing dominance in the home mortgage and student loan categories is cause for concern, posing a threat to private investors, borrowers, and taxpayers.

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.

Government involvement has worsened the economic crisis, and the role of the Federal Reserve in regulating the financial sector should be reconsidered.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council is now prepared to designate 'systematically important financial institutions', another step towards creating an unhealthy and dangerous relationship between the biggest financial firms and the federal government. Read AEI financial services expert Peter Wallison's detailed insights on how this change poses a serious threat to the US financial system.

As policymakers continue their efforts to reduce the government’s role in the currently nationalized housing market, the broadly available and deep subsidies provided to the five divisions of the Government Mortgage Complex continue to distort the marketplace and thwart these efforts.