Affordable Housing Institute : US

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.]
 
In our quest to understand Treasury’s recent moves in the market, we’ve identified three overriding principles:
 

No Great Depression on my watch, got it?
 
1. Prevent the Second Great Depression
2. Keep the GSEs in the loan-buying business. 
3. Do as little as possible, if that
 
The first is the goal that can never speak […]

By their works ye shall know them, as the saying goes, and over the last few weeks, we have found the world’s financial markets gyrating hysterically as they seek to decipher what the new ruling troika of Paulson, Bernanke, and Geithner will do next.
 

New York Times: Ben Bernanke, far left; Tim Geithner, far right
With […]

“But the pension fund was just sitting there!” protested Doonesbury’s Uncle Duke, when confronted with what lesser minds would unsympathetically describe as embezzlement.   

“That’s really narrow thinking!”
 
But that’s the problem with excess capital, isn’t it?  Somebody always finds a use for it.
 

Look, the jar’s overfull anyway!
 
Such a problem is illustrated, unfortunately, by the expenditure creativity being displayed […]

Do you feel … lucky?
 
Ever get yourself into an oh-no fix?  One of those where, scarce seconds after you’ve slammed the car door shut, hit the delete key or the flush lever, or seen the subway doors shut behind you bearing away your luggage?
 

Not that lever!
 
Multiply that by roughly a thousand and you have the […]

[Continued from the preceding Part 1 and Part 2]
 
Continuing our analysis of the GSEs’ takeover by Treasury’s conservatorship, using as our principal text a lengthy if jumbled New York Times account, we’ve now reached the crunch-time weekend when Treasury had concluded something had to be done – and fast:
 

How many minutes ’til takeover?
 
While Democrats gathered in […]