Affordable Housing Institute : US

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.]

In yesterday’s post, exploring the US’s banking history via a well-reasoned and opinionated Wall Street Journal op-ed by banking historian and essayist/ fulminator John Steele Gordon, we had reached the stage of circling liquidity injections and confidence injections as essential responses to financial crises. 
 

Hold still for the liquidity and confidence
 
It’s […]

Chaos ensues when an enterprise’s span of activity is greater than the span of judicial or regulatory consistency.  That, at least, is the plausible hypothesis behind the emergence of the FBI, brought into being to chase Bonnie and Clyde across state lines; and Interpol, created to pursue criminals throughout Europe. 

Eliot Ness, 1929: you need a […]

The concept behind this post has been in my head for years, but it took the events of last weekend, when Treasury’s master plan to recapitalize the US banking system was forced through Congress, to crystallize it into a phrase: the inevitability effect.
 
No, that’s not the latest Robert Ludlum thriller.
 

 
Rather, it describes the change […]

“If revenge is a dish best served cold,” said Holmes, “then inflation is a dish long marinated.”
 
Fearing the worst, Watson folded the Times and composed himself in the attentively placid pose appropriate for the straight man.  “Yes?”
 

Watson knew a disquisition was about to begin
 
Holmes unlimbered his long legs.  “Inflation is the young’s revenge on […]

Tuesday night, November 4, 2008

Dear Mr. President-Elect:
 
Congratulations, you’ve stepped into the most powerful job in the world. 
 
Or have you?
 

Some folks look at me and see a certain swagger, which in Texas is called “walking.” George W. Bush
 
Because political capital is a commodity of value only so long as one is in office, a shrewd […]