All Posts Tagged With: "mortgage-backed securities"

Stop Insuring Mortgages

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) announced last December that it wants tougher rules on mortgage lenders. Maybe FHA got spooked by a New York Times story in November titled “Easy Loans to Wealthier Areas,” which said: “In its efforts to prop up a shattered housing market, the government is greatly extending its traditional support of [...]

24Feb2010 | John Stossel | 4 comments | Continued

Boom and Bust: Crisis and Response

America has experienced a classic economic boom and bust, which I first chronicled in the November 2007 Freeman. Ill-conceived policies to encourage homeownership channeled cheap credit into housing markets. Land-use and zoning policies restricted the supply of housing in key desirable markets. In The Housing Boom and Bust, Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution has [...]

24Feb2010 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 2 comments | Continued

Bad Lending Still a Problem

“The trouble signs surrounding Lend America had been building for years … Home loans made by its headquarters were defaulting at an extremely high rate … Yet despite these red flags, a little-known federal agency continued giving its blessing to Lend America, allowing it to do business in the name of the U.S. government. The [...]

10Dec2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 0 comments | Continued

Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse

Thomas Woods’s Meltdown is a marvel of writing and publishing. Having arrived on shelves in February, it offers a complete analysis of the causes of the current recession as well as a critical assessment of the mistakes policymakers have already made, and will likely continue to make, in response to the economic decline. The marvel [...]

23Sep2009 | Steven Horwitz | 15 comments | Continued

Bailing Out Statism

The key to understanding the saga of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—the recently nationalized twin government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) that dominate home financing—is this: They were set up—intentionally—to distort the housing and mortgage markets. Government planners were not content to let voluntary exchange and spontaneous market forces configure those industries unmolested. So—holding the taxpayers hostage—they intervened. [...]

20Jan2009 | Sheldon Richman | 12 comments | Continued

State Capitalism in Crisis

The transfer of risk through government privilege — the removal or weakening of market discipline — more than accounts for what’s going on these days.

26Sep2008 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | Continued

Can the Feds Save the Housing Market?

Government Solutions Will Only Make Matters Worse

1Jun2008 | Robert P. Murphy | 13 comments | Continued

The Fed Didn’t Bail Out Wall Street?

In his New York Times column (“It’s Monetary Policy, Not a Morality Play,” September 9, 2007), Tyler Cowen decried the clichéd pattern of casting all financial stories into “simple moral narratives.” Although many commentators have questioned the Fed’s handling of the credit crunch last August and September, Cowen sees no hanky-panky: Talk of a bailout [...]

1Jan2008 | Robert P. Murphy | 4 comments | Continued

Welfare for the Rich

Advocates of the free market—including those considered “right-wing” and “conservative”—believe it is wrong to violate property rights. Consequently, they oppose egalitarian measures to steal from the rich and give to the poor. Such “income redistribution” represents naked theft and epitomizes the Founding Fathers’ fears of unfettered democracy. At the same time, champions of laissez faire [...]

1Apr2007 | Robert P. Murphy | 10 comments | Continued

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