Since the enactment of a regulatory regime for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, their regulator has had only the powers of a conservator. This ordinarily means that the regulator could take control of the two GSEs under certain circumstances, but couldn't--as a receiver could--marshal their assets, pay off their creditors,...

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. 

The Dodd-Frank Act recognizes that investor understandings about endgame rules influence a firm’s appetite for risk and that, higher capital requirements on systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs) cannot by themselves end creditor perceptions that in most circumstances SIFIs are economically, politically, and administratively too difficult to fail and unwind.

The best answer to the housing GSEs, whichinvolves the privatization of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac,and the Federal Home Loan Banks, remains politically improbable.

In the case of Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder the Supreme Court declined to decide on a radical provision in the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

A now-irrelevant provision of the Voting Rights Act may soon be no more.

The turmoil at Fannie Mae signals it is time for Congress to reconsider the structure of the federally chartered Government Sponsored Enterprises.

Anumber of steps can be taken toeliminate the impressionthatFannie Mae and Freddie Macare backed by the government, withfull privatization beingideal.