This research brief provides an overview of the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the housing finance market and provides a framework in which reform options for the two companies can be evaluated. These options include a return to the pre-crisis status quo; a move to redirect Fannie and...

It is always a bit unnerving to read someone else's love letters, but even more so, when you have the same object of desire. Edward Glaeser's TRIUMPH OF THE CITY is a love letter to cities and to New York City in particular. Glaeser provides a theoertical framework of the city, arguing that...

The federal government recently placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government chartered, privately owned mortgage finance companies, in conservatorship. These two massive companies are profit driven, but as government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) they also have a government-mandated mission...

Isolating first principles of housing policy helps identify what is intrinsic to that field. Once done, we can clearly analyze potential policy choices for housing specifically, as opposed to how they may contribute to some larger goal of social policy. Imposing some analytic structure here is...

John Godfrey Saxe's 19th century poem, "The Blind Men and the Elephant," opens with six learned men, "Who went to see the Elephant/(Though all of them were blind)/That each by observation/Might satisfy his mind." The financial crisis is the Elephant of our time. Over the last couple of years,...

This article analyses how courts may reach results that undercut arguments that REMICs were the owners of the mortgage notes and mortgages for tax purposes. And even if the majority of states rule in favor of REMICs, the few that do not can destroy the REMIC classification of many mortgage-back...

REMICs are securitized pools of mortgages that qualify for special flow-through taxation. To qualify for flow-through tax treatment, the pool must satisfy several requirements. An intended REMIC that fails to satisfy those requirements will likely be taxed as a corporation and payments made to...

Investors in mortgage-backed securities, built on the shoulders of the tax-advantaged Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduit (“REMIC”), may be facing extraordinary tax losses because of how bankers and lawyers structured these securities. This calamity is compounded by the fact that those...

There has been a lot of fear-mongering by financial industry trade groups over the widespread use of eminent domain to restructure residential mortgages. While there may be legitimate business reasons to oppose its use, its inconsistency with Takings jurisprudence should not be one of them. To...

This is an unannotated bibliography of writings about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as some material that covers other government sponsored enterprises such as the Federal Home Loan Bank System. While it is comprehensive, it is not exhaustive, with a focus on work published through 2011 by...