This article is the first part of a two-part examination of the contentious issue of how state governments' provision of goods and services to the public should be taxed under a VAT.

Reform focused on sustainable lending would have FHA target a projected average claim rate of 5 per 100 insured loans under normal circumstances and 10 per 100 insured loans under stress circumstances.  This rate is about five times the normal default level for prime loans and about half the FHA's traditional default level under normal circumstances.

Wharton School professor Joseph Gyourko explains in a new research paper, Is FHA the Next Housing Bailout?, that the FHA will need a massive $50 to $100 billion bailout unless the economy makes a swift recovery.

In less than twenty-five years, government “affordable housing” and other housing policies have turned a healthy market into a financial ruin. Until Fannie and Freddie’s market dominance and the government’s role in the housing finance system are substantially reduced or eliminated, the United States will continue to have an inferior and unstable housing market.

Introduction

For a bankrupt country in the middle of hyperinflation, the discovery of a major diamond deposit in Zimbabwe in June 2006 should have been good news. Instead it has provided sustenance to a volatile and violent political elite that suppresses the majority. The power sharing/coalition government in Zimbabwe came into...

The idea that government can create jobs in the economy is a myth, and painting the myth green makes it no less of a myth. The experience of Europe, which has preceded us in the quest for a new green economy, is both negative, and unsustainable, with subsidies being cut back, and feed-in tariffs reduced.

President Obama in his State of the Union Address proposed that legislation be passed authorizing FHA to provide all homeowners that are current on their mortgage the opportunity to refinance at today's record low rates.

The idea that the government can create jobs on net in the economy is a myth, and painting the myth green makes it no less of a myth.