Category: Government

Catastrophe is a precondition to financial reform: Part 2, Postwar

7 May, 2008 (10:48) | Essential posts, Government, Policy, Theory | No comments

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]  
Yesterday, in search of the answer to whether the sweeping reforms proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson might be enacted any time soon, I posed the question: is the current catastrophe big enough?
 

Paste one on the nearest financial crisis
 
We saw how Shay’s Rebellion led to the Constitution, the Panic of 1907 to [...]

Catastrophe is a precondition to financial reform: Part 1, pre-Depression

6 May, 2008 (09:26) | Essential posts, Government, Policy, Theory | No comments

The last few weeks have revealed gaping fissures in our financial liquidity system. 
 

What do you mean, we outran our boundaries?
 
Will they lead to meaningful reforms, such as the sweeping reforms proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson?
 

As treasury Secretary, I pray they do
 
It’s evident to me they should be – with any luck I’ll write the [...]

How a program ages: Part 2, maturity and decline

18 October, 2007 (11:39) | Government, Theory | No comments

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]

Yesterday we explored the first three phases: Conceptualization, Enactment, and Chaos. Now the program starts maturing.

You’re more successful if you’re Mature

4. Codification. After a program has been running for a while — measured by time, number of properties, or range of circumstances — the rule-writers take over. This [...]

How a program ages: the six stages of public perception

17 October, 2007 (09:41) | Government, Theory | No comments

More than twenty years ago, at a housing conference I co-chaired where I was describing a then-nifty innovation in affordable housing finance, someone tossed up the doubting-Thomas question, “Why get in now?  Why not wait until things are clearer?”
 

I’m not ready to take a position on the matter
 
“Because,” I extemporaneously shot back without thinking, [...]

Moral bankruptcy: Part 2, the camel’s back

2 October, 2007 (08:41) | Government, US News | No comments

[Continued from yesterday's  Part 1.]
 
Yesterday we saw that HUD not only is under-funding Section 8 contracts, it is using the holdback of even the partial payments as a coercion to compel owners to sign new amendments acknowledging that HUD is doing so.
 

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
 
A system that depends on the government honoring its [...]