Saturday, September 17, 2011

Allowing underwater borrowers to refinance could improve investors' Sharpe Ratio

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Consider borrowers with 6 percent 30-year mortgages that are 20 percent underwater.  Assume that the probability that any one borrower will ...
2 comments:
Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Testimony to Senate Banking Committee on the Need for Mortgage Guarantees

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I testified yesterday.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011

If the Walt Disney Company ran LA Metro...

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People would pay $80 a day to leave their cars in a garage, and then walk from one mode of rail transit to another.  And the rail trips woul...
Friday, September 09, 2011

Jim Follain has a proposal for empirical macro

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He writes: First, let’s do more research to help reduce the uncertainty regarding the fiscal situation we face and the new, modern and mor...
3 comments:
Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Ten-Year Treasury Below 2 percent!

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If I am reading this graph correctly , we are at a 130 year record: Those bond vigilantes sure are being vengeful.  And how about that S...
1 comment:
Monday, September 05, 2011

Where are the Medicis when you need them?

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Richard White's Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America , is a wonderful book.  In it he shows how the railro...

Realtors should love school spending

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In the most recent Wisconsin gubernatorial election, Realtors and homebuilders were the leading campaign contributors to Scott Walker. As g...
6 comments:
Friday, September 02, 2011

A point I wish I had made to NPR

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I just finished taping an interview with Robert Siegel on finding our way out of the housing crisis.  I agreed with Elizabeth Duke about the...
Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Allowing underwater borrowers to refinance could help

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Yves Smith and Adam Levitin , for whom I have enormous respect, argue that allowing underwater borrowers to refinance their mortgages at l...
4 comments:
Monday, August 29, 2011

Top 10 Least-Polluting U.S. Metros

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From the Urban Land Institute: Top 10 Least-Polluting U.S. Metros : As greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction policies gain momentum at the fe...
Thursday, August 25, 2011

What does Warren Buffett know?

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When I first read this morning that Warren Buffett had invested $5 billion in Bank of America, I was puzzled.  I didn't know how Buffett...
2 comments:

Robert E. McCormick and Robert D. Tollison on the NCAA's Subversion of the Academy

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This is worth reproducing (with the kind permission of the authors) in its entirety: Two great American institutions are about to crank up...
2 comments:
Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Two cents (or maybe a nickel) on Texas.

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Texas is doing well relative to the country.  Its jobs creation rate is second only to North Dakota, a state whose population is smaller tha...
4 comments:
Sunday, August 21, 2011

Cost and benefit

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I listened to a colleague of mine on Friday discuss how nothing adds to our carbon footprint like flying-and I have little doubt that he is ...

Triumph of the Rentier City?

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I am teaching a senior honors seminar this fall.  Among the readings is Ed Glaeser's new book, TheTriumph of the City .  It is a perfec...
4 comments:
Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Even in principle, figuring out a fair tax system is hard

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How does one set up a system such that everyone pays their fair share of taxes?  Let us suppose that a "fair" tax is one where eve...
6 comments:
Monday, August 15, 2011

Two GOP Governors stuck in a 1950s Economy

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I heard Wisconsin governor Scott Walker speak in Madison a few months ago.  His economic strategy for the state?  Smokestack chasing and bel...
2 comments:

PPD 498 Fall Syllabus

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PPD 498: Senior Honors Seminar in Policy, Planning and Development University of Southern California Professor Richard K. Green richarkg@...
2 comments:
Sunday, August 14, 2011

Current Construction of the New World Trade Center Site

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Around 8.3 million square feet of space is currently under construction at the World Trade Center Site.  To put this in context, downtown St...
2 comments:

Jeremy Stein for Fed Governor

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Mark Thoma writes that the administration is considering nominating Richard Clarida and Jeremy Stein for the Federal Reserver Board. He ci...
2 comments: