May/June 2012
Articles
- FEMA Online Tool Aids in Community Rebuilding
- Reinventing Older Communities Conference Materials Posted Online
- Discussion of State Small Business Credit Initiative
- SE CDFI conference July 18–19
- Prepaid Cards Evaluated for Safety
- Housing Rural Populations: Overview of Changing Needs
- Apply for Affordable Housing Program Grant
- Cleveland Fed Summit June 28–29
- Power in Partnerships: Addressing Workforce Development Challenges
- May 29 Session on Lessons from Resurgent and Transforming Cities
- Fed Gov. Discusses Housing
- Research Paper Reexamines Foreclosure Crisis
- Blog Posting Points to Housing Improvement in the Southeast
- Closing the Gap: Improving Minority-Owned Small Firms' Access to Credit
- Analysis of a Recent Mortgage Proposal
- Research Paper Considers the Role of Government in Housing Finance
Departments
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The Devil's in the Tail: Residential Mortgage Finance and the U.S. Treasury
The future role of the federal government in housing finance is a subject of recent debate and discussion. Contributing to this dialogue, Atlanta Fed economists Scott Frame and Larry Wall and Professor Lawrence J. White of New York University have authored a research paper that provides an overview and assessment of recent policy proposals. Presented at the Atlanta Fed's 2012 Financial Markets Conference, the authors acknowledge that there appears to be a broad consensus to maintain government guarantees for certain narrowly defined borrower populations. However, they note that the role of the federal government in the broader housing finance system remains in dispute, ranging from no role to insuring against only extreme or tail events to insuring against all losses.