Thursday, July 31, 2008

Robert Van Order on Fannie and Freddie

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When I left Madison for Washington six years ago, it was to follow my wife, who was offered a terrific job practicing geriatric medicine for...
17 comments:
Tuesday, July 29, 2008

A web site for bridge geeks who grew up near the Mississippi River

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John Weeks provides a treasure trove of pictures and stories about bridges that cross the Mississippi River. He dedicates one page each to ...
Monday, July 28, 2008

Cities as Museums

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When I was a kid, my father told me that the way to get to know cities was to walk and take the bus. I have followed his advice ever since,...
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New to the top of the reading list

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I need to go get Rick Perlstein's Nixonland . It is not just that Brad Delong recommends it (and I think the most valuable service Bra...
1 comment:
Sunday, July 27, 2008

Is William Poole kidding?

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He gets some things right in his op-ed piece in today's New York Times . Fannie and Freddie should have higher capital requirements and...
2 comments:
Saturday, July 26, 2008

Mark Thoma thinks housing supply elasticities may be assymetric

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The basic point is that in markets with lots of land, housing may be supplied elastically during booms, but takes a long-time to adjust duri...
Thursday, July 24, 2008

Never mind

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From the National Association of Realtors today: Total housing inventory at the end of June rose 0.2 percent to 4.49 million existing homes ...
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Wednesday, July 23, 2008

What is normalcy?

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gaius marius writes: fwiw -- and i realize this is but anecdotal, but it is illustrative of the general condition -- i live in suburban c...
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OFHEO HPI and long term trends.

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The new OFHEO house price index came out yesterday. At the moment, I like OFHEO better than Case-Shiller (I worry that Case-Shiller is now ...
3 comments:
Tuesday, July 22, 2008

What does it mean?

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Obama has 1.1 million fans on facebook. McCain has 170,000 fans on facebook. Of course, McCain doesn't know what facebook is.
1 comment:
Monday, July 21, 2008

Perspective on Fannie and Freddie (update)

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I should have looked at the 10Qs (duh) for the first quarter. Credit losses for both companies were around 12bp (although survivable), whic...

Perhaps we can start looking for a bottom

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I have long said that so long as the months supply of housing available for sale is rising, it is not possible to know then the housing mark...
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Saturday, July 19, 2008

A little perspective on Fannie and Freddie

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Above are charts of 90-day delinquencies (based on the Monthly Volume Summaries and the OFHEO Report to Congress) through the first quarter ...
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Friday, July 18, 2008

Inflation and the Development of Mortgage Markets in Emerging Economies

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Rising commodity prices have not just placed upward pressure on inflation in the US. In emerging markets, the impact is, in many cases, lar...
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Unhappiness (again)

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From Greg Ip : For decades, the typical college graduate's wage rose well above inflation. But no longer. In the economic expansion that...
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Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Greg Mankiw's Economics Platform

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He tries to list the things for which there is a consensus among economists. It is actually quite good. I have two problems with the list....
3 comments:
Monday, July 14, 2008

A Modest Proposal for Richard Syron and Dan Mudd

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The two CEOs would take compensation of $1 per year plus restricted stock that doesn't vest for, say, two years. By doing this, whey wou...
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Mark Zandi says the Price-Rent ratio is returning to the fundamentally correct level

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He is quoted in today's WSJ . Also coming into balance, though not there quite yet, is the ratio of home prices to rents. The lower the ...
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Now that I will be driving to work most days

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I will swap my minivan for a Toyota Corolla. I love the Prius, but the price premium in California is too high--assuming you can even get o...
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Paul Krugman on the GSEs

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He writes : But here’s the thing: Fannie and Freddie had nothing to do with the explosion of high-risk lending a few years ago, an explosion...
3 comments: