Affordable Housing Institute : US

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1 and Part 2 .]
 
So far we’ve seen that American-born microfinance originated, as has global finance, based on shifts in the larger credit markets.  As chronicled in Funding Universe, what became Household Finance Corporation boomed during the good times, suffered a backlash during the Panic of 1907, was under financial and regulatory […]

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.]
 
Yesterday’s post explored the emergence of ’steam-powered microfinance’ from the turn-of-the-century household-finance industry, as chronicled in Funding Universe.
 

Another turn-of-the-century invention: New York’s Williamsburg bridge
 
By 1900, HFC had established itself, developed a market niche, introduced its killer-app financial product – a short tenor, small personal loan for almost any purpose – and […]

Age has few enough consolations, of which one is that things others might have studied in school, you can remember.
 

Decades hence, who among us will still remember this class?
 
We think of microfinance as a post-electronic activity, yet some of us can remember a similar small-scale finance that comes from a time before the internet, before […]

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.]
 
Yesterday, using a New York Times article as a springboard, we examined Humpty Dumpty’s question of value: what does value mean, and who decides that it means that? 
 

“Everything’s coming up roses”
 
For reasons I listed yesterday, the assets are often valued by people who have a vast vested interest in seeing them […]

“It’s worth what I say it’s worth.”
 

The louder I shout it, the truer it must be!
 
That, more or less, is the defense offer by Bear Stearns as to the value of enormous pools of highly structured complex instruments on their books, a declaration so patently self-serving and self-interested that, with Bear now absorbed into JPMorgan […]