a speech at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's Economic Symposium, Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Swelling REO inventories are the latest fallout of the housing crisis, costing lenders money and contributing to neighborhood blight. Yet lenders could avoid taking on so much REO if they could more accurately estimate the value of the homes they foreclose on, especially in weak housing markets....

For decades, nonprofit housing and consumer-focused organizations have worked in low- and moderate-income (LMI) areas to address improvident mortgage lending practices that have led to high rates of vacancy and unstable neighborhoods. Questionable lending is not a new problem in LMI areas, in...

In 2009, states, counties and cities across the country applied for approximately $3.9 billion from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to confront the problems of foreclosures and property abandonment. The Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) is the principal...

Many well-respected economists have suggested plans for mortgage restructuring built on the idea of share appreciation mortgages, which generate rather complex transactions with conflicting interests between the lender and the homeowner. The 60/40 Plan, however, combines several economic...