In September 2008, the US government placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship and entered into preferred stock purchase agreements with each. Since that time, these two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) have received $148 billion in taxpayer-injected equity. By contrast, the...

Speculative runs on asset price fixing schemes are most often attributed either to an inexplicable mass hysteria or to a sudden, unpredictable random disturbance. Such attribution places runs and panics outside of the realm of scientific inquiry. Alternatively, in this paper I define the notion...