The expansion of agency debt not only imposes risk and realized losses on taxpayers, it also increases the cost of Treasury's direct financing, by creating a huge pool of alternate government-backed securities to compete with Treasury securities, and thus increases the interest cost to taxpayers.

This paper explores important areas of the SEC ' s jurisdiction where attention to its statutory obligations would produce more balanced policies in the future .

As a result of the high loan limits and the suppression of private securitization through the obstacles and disincentives listed below, approximately 90% of all originations and 99% of all securitizations are now government guaranteed. This is an ongoing liability for the taxpayers and an unhealthy fiscal position for the United States.

We should aim in the long term for a housing finance sector which is principally a robust private market, and one in which you can be either a private company, or you can be a government agency, but you can't be both.

Beyond the Securities and Exchange Commission's oversight failures in the cases of Enron and WorldCom, the Commission's addiction to press coverage has led it to emphasize enforcement activities above all else.

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.

Alex Pollock gives the House Financial Services Committee 12 different solutions and ideas for moving forward and dealing with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Economics and finance might be science, if it were not for people.