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.

$25 billion in National Mortgage Settlement and other policy efforts have worked to prevent the real estate market from clearing.  At the same time, these policies have harmed those who have done the right thing.

National Mortgage News (December 19) asks, "Can Regulators Prevent the Next Systemic Risk Crisis?" Probably not.  Certainly not, if they can't even define the central term, "systemic risk."  As Donna Borak writes, "The chief obstacle to heading off systemic risk turns out to be agreeing on a definition for...

Three years into the nationalization of housing finance by government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Authority, it is time to start reducing their footprints. 

This event will address the problems and improvements needed for student loans, beginning with a keynote presentation by former secretary of education Bill Bennett.

The dominant financial and economic fact of 2011 is that we are still living in the wake of the great 21-st century bubble. The dominant problem with being in the wake of the bubble is that we cannot escape Pollock's Law of Finance, which states: Loans that cannot be paid will not be paid.

Only by ensuring mortgage quality and fostering the accumulation of adequate capital behind housing risk can a robust housing investment market be created without government guarantees.

Super committee members Sen. Pat Toomey and Rep. Jeb Hensarling are taking flak from some conservatives for proposing a deal including increases in "revenues." But it's worth taking a look at what Toomey and Hensarling actually were talking about. It may not matter now but could after 2012.