1. It was the subject of this forum. My main meta take-away is that the future of housing policy is in the grasping hands of the housing lobby. There was a lot of talk about “the American dream,” the need to preserve the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, etc. These are people who, when they talk about the need to bring private capital back into housing, actually think in terms of what sort of government guarantee is needed to accomplish this. When it comes to policy, the people who I think should be disqualified from participating are at the center of the discussion, and the people who I think ought to be at the center of the discussion are marginalized.
2. In my housing finance course, I have just started to get into one of my favorite topics, which is mortgage analytics. In a few weeks, I will get to the issue of the housing lobby, and if my mood is the same as it was after leaving the policy forum, my lecture on the housing lobby should be one heckuva rant.
I had the same impression. It was nice that at least the claim that investors aren’t a significant force in the current housing market was debunked in real-time, but it was telling that no one challenged Timiraos’s “devil’s advocate” question about the 30 year fr mortgage.
The rhetoric of it was particularly striking given the intense focus on data the rest of the forum seemed to possess. The speakers couldn’t wait to talk numbers until it came to defending a government guarantee as necessary to preserve a systemically fragile and distorted housing market.
Your question on risk was a terrific one. It would have been helpful if the panel had actually been willing to address it as a serious issue.
“When it comes to policy, the people who I think should be disqualified from participating are at the center of the discussion, and the people who I think ought to be at the center of the discussion are marginalized.”
…it’s not just in housing, but rather found across the whole gamut of policymaking, isn’t it? Seems to be the rule rather than the exception.