Category: Regulation and Reform

E pluribus sexum: Part 3, Why fight it?

31 January, 2013 (10:00) | Apartments, Consolidation, Innovations, Management, Massachusetts, MEEs, Politics, Public housing, Regulation and Reform, Subsidy |

By:David A. Smith   [Continued from yesterday's Part 2 and the preceding Part 1.]   In the two preceding parts of this post, starting from a short Boston Globe (January 10, 2013) article to introduce Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s proposal to consolidate public housing authorities – out of many, six – and along the way [...]

E pluribus sexum: Part 2, Why do it?

30 January, 2013 (10:00) | Apartments, Consolidation, Innovations, Management, Massachusetts, MEEs, Politics, Public housing, Regulation and Reform, Subsidy |

By:David A. Smith   [Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]   Yesterday’s post used a short Boston Globe (January 10, 2013) article to introduce Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s proposal to consolidate the current 242 individual public housing authorities into six regional entities, and at the same time to end the practice of purely local commissioners in [...]

E pluribus sexum: Part 1, What to do?

29 January, 2013 (16:10) | Apartments, Consolidation, Innovations, Management, Massachusetts, MEEs, Politics, Public housing, Regulation and Reform, Subsidy |

By:David A. Smith   Every now and then, an elected official pleasantly surprises one, and Deval Patrick has now done it twice: first in December, 2011, by appointing Aaron Gornstein to be Undersecretary of the Department of Housing and Community Development; and a few weeks ago, as reported in the Boston Globe (January 10, 2013), [...]

There ain’t no such thing as free checking

19 October, 2012 (14:32) | Banking, checking accounts, Dodd-Frank, Innovations, Markets, Regulation and Reform, US News |

By:David A. Smith   Reform is a fine thing that we all support, and free services are fine things we all accept, so we cheer when a regulator reins in a runaway plutocrat, but as the plutocrats’ best friend the Wall Street Journal (September 23, 2012) observes, there really ain’t no such thing as free [...]

Assume no crisis, and presto!

2 December, 2010 (12:45) | Capital markets, Fannie Mae, Finance, Freddie Mac, GSEs, Regulation and Reform, Secondary markets, Speculation, US News |

By: David A. Smith    Emil Henry Jr., who recently penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled with the provocative nostrum “How to Shut Down Fannie and Freddie,” has real credentials – a stint as United States Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Institutions, working for Treasury Secretaries John Snow and Henry Paulson from [...]