Fresh Prose...
"Grant that we may never forget that our common life depends on each other's toil." Book of Common Prayer
Affordable housing goals
What role did the housing goals play in the demise of Freddie and Fannie? How risky were those targeted affordable loans, really? In place for more than 15 years by the time the housing bubble popped in 2007, the GSE affordable housing measure how many units of...
Reckoning day
Midafternoon on Friday, September 5, 2008, while the rest of official Washington sought to beat weekend rush hour traffic, Richard Syron, Freddie Mac CEO and Board Chairman, and his Fannie Mae counterpart, Daniel Mudd, met their fates in a conference room in an...
hope
wilderness tears oasis Saints say there are streams in your deserts. Show me one and I'll fall face down and suck it dry. And while you're at it: hide me in tents robe me in silks revive me with raisins under your love banner. -- Pruned, poems and pleadings at...
POD
You've heard of WOD, right? Think CrossFit -- and those overly energetic friends of yours always talking about the workout of the day. You know, throwing tires, lifting steel buildings and such. How about something less strenuous, for the body at least? Every now and...
Trading on (implicit) confusion
Just who (or what) was Freddie Mac? Why did our "murky government ties" matter so much? In the early 1990s, I helped staff a meeting between our top economists and some visiting officials from Mexico. After a hearty lunch, one of our visitors wiped his moustache and...
Fatal fault lines
Since leaving Freddie Mac, I have thought a lot about my experiences there, about the things Freddie Mac did right and wrong, and more broadly about the strengths and weaknesses of the GSE-model of housing finance. I’ve looked at respected analyses of mortgage...
Beginning of the end
Early one Monday morning in late August 2008, I walked into another vice president’s office and shut the door. I needed to know how bad things were. He was more knowledgeable about where Freddie Mac stood in the capital sense, that is, whether the company was still...
Reflecting at 10 years
So...here are are: August 2018 It's been 10 years since the fateful unwinding of my former company, Freddie Mac. That once proud Fortune 50 company, along with Fannie Mae, had been the backbone of the country's housing finance system. In many ways, it still is. But...