Alex J. Pollock

FHFA Director Mark Calabria should ensure the government-sponsored enterprises hold at least 4% of total assets as part of housing finance reform.

As policymakers consider administrative reforms to Fannie and Freddie, they must address the problem of capital arbitrage to avoid overleveraging the mortgage system.

A new analysis of mortgage data demonstrates how default rates, not just approval and decline rates, can be used to evaluate findings of unfair treatment in lending.

Debates on the issue often focus on how lending decisions affect certain demographic groups, but those analyses tend to ignore an important factor: default rates.

The reserve bank's proposal to address banks and nonbanks that remain "too big to fail" does not include two of the largest such institutions: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Lenders should be encouraged to hold more credit risk in the mortgage market, rather than having it foisted on Fannie and Freddie.

The GSEs are on their way to paying back the money they owed the government under the original bailout deal made at the height of the financial crisis, making 2018 an opportune time for an overhaul of the housing finance market.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency must set fees equal to the cost of capital that private banks hold against similar risk, not just the amount of capital that Fannie and Freddie think are right for themselves.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council is masquerading as an analytical, objective body that more accurately reflects the Dodd-Frank Act's aim to expand the power of bureaucrats.

The biggest change in banking in the last 60 years is the shift in balance sheets from business lending to real estate finance and therefore more risk tied to volatile real estate prices.

Fannie and Freddie's profits depend on having their obligations backed by the U.S. Treasury. Therefore they should have to pay a sensible price for this backstop — just like big banks.

Anywhere in the world, if you had $55 billion in capital, and then lost $55 billion, your capital would be zero. But under the Fed’s own special accounting rule, if it lost $55 billion, its capital would still be $55 billion.

One of the most important government actions affecting the farmland bubble goes back to before it was inflated.

Last year's repeal of the final remaining vestige of Regulation Q, the prohibition of payment of interest on business demand deposits, at long last completed a pro-competitive process which began with the Monetary Control Act of 1980. The repeal was and is a good idea.

"Out of the river there came up seven cows, sleek and fat, and they grazed among the reeds. After them, seven other cows, ugly and gaunt, came up out of the Nile...And the cows that were ugly and gaunt ate up the seven sleek, fat cows." - Genesis 41

The Mystery of Banking The bank has ten billion this year, But the money is simply not Here--

What thoughts should guide ongoing Congressional consideration on housing finance? Let's start with this one: "It is increasingly clear that the Fed and the U.S. government's entwinement with the housing market is one of the greatest economic distortions on earth" (as the Lex Column of the Financial Times wrote).

National Mortgage News (December 19) asks, “Can Regulators Prevent the Next Systemic Risk Crisis?” Probably not.