Posts Tagged ‘mortgages’
By James Kwak There was a time when the main purpose of this blog was to explain just how some government policy or other official action was designed to benefit some large bank under the cover of the public interest. In a bit of nostalgia, I wrote this week’s Atlantic column on the Freddie Mac–Bank [...]
By James Kwak Many commentators who want to blame Fannie and Freddie for the financial crisis base their arguments on analysis done by Edward Pinto. (Peter Wallison bases some of his dissent from the FCIC report on Pinto; even Raghuram Rajan cites Pinto on this point.) According to Pinto’s numbers, about half of all mortgages in the [...]
By James Kwak My previous post on Fannie/Freddie had two major parts. In the first part, I questioned whether the thirty-year fixed-rate mortgage would really go away (or become much more expensive) without Fannie/Freddie, as some people have argued. In the second part, I said, who cares? The first part has gotten a fair amount of [...]
By James Kwak (Yes, I know that isn’t saying much.) Most people think that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had something to do with the financial crisis. Some people think that they were the major reason the crisis happened, which (to them) proves that activist government policy was the cause of the crisis. Other people, [...]
By James Kwak Adam Levitin and Susan Wachter have written an excellent paper on the housing bubble with the somewhat immodest title, “Explaining the Housing Bubble” (which has been sitting in my inbox for a month). My main complaint with it is that it’s eighty-one pages long (single-spaced), which is most likely a function of [...]
By James Kwak I’ve been largely sitting out the foreclosure scandal/crisis. Partly I’ve just been too busy, and partly the coverage on other blogs has been great. Mike Konczal in particular has been providing the “beginners” posts–here’s part one of five–that were my niche during the earlier part of the financial crisis, basically putting me [...]
By James Kwak Since most of you probably read Calculated Risk, you’ve probably seen the Sun Sentinel story of the man in Florida who paid cash for a house–and still lost it in a foreclosure. Not only that, but he bought the house in a short sale in December 2009, the foreclosure sale happened in [...]
By James Kwak Mike Konczal did some more great work earlier this week in two posts on the not-so-exciting topic of second liens. I don’t have much in the way of new insight or analysis to provide, so let me just summarize. A second lien is a second mortgage on a house. The second lien [...]
This guest post was contributed by Norman I. Silber, a Professor of Law at Hofstra Law School, and Jeff Sovern , a Professor of Law at St. John’s University. They were principal drafters of a statement signed by more than eighty-five professors who teach in fields related to banking and consumer law, supporting H. 3126, [...]
Since the peak of the financial crisis, both the Bush and Obama administrations have been trying to rescue both large banks and homeowners, often announcing programs for both in the same press conference. The programs for large banks have gone well, from the beneficiaries’ perspective (but not for small banks); programs for homeowners, not so [...]
With everyone hoping for positive GDP growth in Q3 and Goldman Sachs analyst Jan Hatzius now predicting growth at an annual rate of three percent in the second half of the year, the banks, investors, and politicians are all hoping that that nasty problem of foreclosures would just go away already. Unfortunately for everyone – [...]
Good for Deputy Treasury Secretary (and YLS alumnus) Neal Wolin for wading into the American Bankers Association to defend the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. According to FinReg21′s article: Wolin firmly rejected the argument made by American Bankers Association chief executive Ed Yingling in recent congressional testimony that responsibility for consumer protection should not be separated [...]
Richard Thaler has a simple argument for plain-vanilla financial products. Mike at Rortybomb deals with some of the predictable objections. This is also similar to Adam Levitin’s position on credit cards, which I wrote about a while back. I’m in favor, although I don’t think it will be enough to simply make the vanilla offering [...]
Tweets About Us- RT @baselinescene: Cute: http://t.co/rzK8VjXl. But is it fair to call "ignorance" the result of a steady stream of lies amplified by the media? emmett_j@twitter.com (Emmett Johnson)
- RT @baselinescene: Cute: http://t.co/rzK8VjXl. But is it fair to call "ignorance" the result of a steady stream of lies amplified by the media? JoScoMac@twitter.com (Scott McLean)
- RT @baselinescene: Purebred dog shows have always been creepy. This just confirms it: http://t.co/6iu2bwjR. /JK gebersole@twitter.com (Garrett Ebersole)
- RT @baselinescene: Purebred dog shows have always been creepy. This just confirms it: http://t.co/6iu2bwjR. /JK april_harding@twitter.com (April Harding)
- RT @baselinescene: Purebred dog shows have always been creepy. This just confirms it: http://t.co/6iu2bwjR. /JK APogonowski@twitter.com (AP)
- RT @baselinescene: Purebred dog shows have always been creepy. This just confirms it: http://t.co/6iu2bwjR. /JK jamiesw@twitter.com (JamieSW)
- The Bear&Bull Blog Daily is out! http://t.co/mcAbzHbi ▸ Top stories today via @thestalwart @baselinescene bearbull@twitter.com (bearbull)
- RT @TheBrowser: Mean-Spirited, Bad Economics: @baselinescene on unemployment benefits & Republican party plans to cut them http://t.co/GVnNzAUN drooperman@twitter.com (Drew)
- Agree with RT @baselinescene: Felix Salmon mocking Jack Welch's vacuous management lesson for Facebook http://t.co/BBKIGOIl /JK Alheri@twitter.com (Lilly Evans)
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Not with a Bang
March 30, 2011 in Commentary
Tags: mortgages, TARP
By James Kwak In the Times, Neil Barofsky, Special Inspector General for TARP, performed the admirable feat of fitting a clear, comprehensive, sober critique of how TARP was implemented and what its long-term impact will be in fewer than 1,000 words. It’s a perspective I mainly agree with,* and it highlights the different priorities that the administration [...]