National Homeownership Strategy

[Sapiens]

The origins of the bubble.

http://www.criterioneconomics.com/do...Commentary.pdf

.

[c1ue]

Re: National Homeownership Strategy

Great find.

So Clinton WAS to blame

[Slimprofits]

Re: National Homeownership Strategy

This is some incredible stuff. Another paper that cites more of the research by Rosner and Mason is: The Subprime Crisis: Cause, Effect and Consequences by R. Christopher Whalen, Institutional Risk Analytics

For anyone that is curious about seeing it in it's entirety, the original HUD publication of the "national homeownership strategy" is not available on the internet, but it is held in 212 American libraries.

There are some deep references to the strategy on the HUD website:

Urban Policy Brief, Number 2 August 1995 HOMEOWNERSHIP AND ITS BENEFITS

Homeownership and Wealth Accumulation

...Homeownership has been called a "forced savings plan" in that an owner-occupant's payments on mortgage principal are retained as equity in a comparatively illiquid asset. Wealth is accumulated to the extent that the constant-dollar value of the owner's equity exceeds any decline in the home's value.

But accrued equity is only one potential financial benefit of homeownership. Buying a home with a mortgage is a leveraged investment: even though only a small part of the purchase price is paid as a downpayment, the buyer controls all appreciation in the value of the property and absorbs any loss in value as well. General trend data
on housing prices confirm that owner-occupied homes have performed well as long-term investments. Real prices for the median-priced home increased by a total of 41 percent between 1960 and 1989. Even the lowest-priced houses increased in value by almost 30 percent.

However, many external factors can affect whether and at what rate a home's value increases or decreases. Changes in interest rates influence demand for housing and its attractiveness relative to other investments. Regional economic downturns, such as the oil "bust" in the Southwest during the mid-1980s, can severely de-press housing prices. The dynamics of a particular hous-ing market or the fortunes of a particular neighborhood can also be a strong determinant of local home values.

Nonetheless, homeownership has become a critical factor in moving up the economic ladder. Home equity is the largest single source of household wealth for most Americans. Median net wealth for homeowners exceeds $78,400, while renters accumulate less than $2,300, or 3 percent of this amount. For homeowners, almost 60 percent of their wealth is in the form of home equity. For minority homeowners, home equity is an even more important component of wealth, representing more than three-fourths of their median net wealth of approxi-mately $48,300, almost 100 times the median wealth of the average black renter (barely $500). For owners in the lowest income brackets as well, equity in single-family homes constitutes more than half their wealth.

Searching around reveals a lot of county and state official links to the strategy as well.

And don't forget "Bush's": A Home Of Your Own: Expanding Opportunities for All Americans

President Bush has a comprehensive agenda to help increase the number of minority homeowners by at least 5.5 million before the end of the decade.

That was in 2003.

a couple of gems:

The mortgage-finance system of the United States, characterized by the benchmark 30-year mortgage, remains the envy of the world.

[..]

Borrowers need to be aware that, while most individuals in housing-related industries are professionals who serve their clients well, there are those who will pressure them to accept loans with exorbitant fees or terms that could cause the borrower to default and lose their home.

[The Outback Oracle]

Re: National Homeownership Strategy

Re the Australian housing market a great video from a "Brett" a contributor on the Stephen Keen debtblog site. "Brett" is appatently the interviewer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyOUKr0OGXE

[Slimprofits]

Re: National Homeownership Strategy

More Americans own their own homes than ever before, and the value of those homes is rising at a steady pace. Our strong housing market is a testament to the faith that Americans place in their homes as a long-term investment. The President has placed a high priority on promoting further gains in homeownership, particularly among minorities. Already, minority homeownership is at a record high, and in 2002 the President set an ambitious goal to add 5.5 million minority homeowners through 2010. Through downpayment assistance programs, financial literacy efforts, tax incentives for building affordable homes, and Individual Development Accounts, the President is promoting the kinds of policies that will strengthen our neighborhoods and communities and provide more Americans a chance to call something their own.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget...promoting.html

[BoomKaboom]

Re: National Homeownership Strategy

You can read the whole story about the National Partners in Homeownership and Rosner's 2001 paper at:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...act_id=1162456

also, with other works by Volker, Ellendorf, Bailey, Rosner at:

http://www.institutmontaigne.org/sub...ches-2712.html

[Slimprofits]

Re: National Homeownership Strategy



http://fdsys.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/WCPD-...-21-Pg1772.htm

Remarks at the White House Conference on Minority Homeownership

October 15, 2002

it's basically the same speech that Clinton delivered when he introduced the National Homeownership Strategy in 1994.

[Slimprofits]

Re: National Homeownership Strategy

Two bills to reform the GSEs were introduced--a Fannie-friendly bill in the House and a White House--friendly bill in the Senate sponsored by Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama. The administration squashed the House bill; Wayne Abernathy, a Treasury official, said, "We must not settle for a crippled regulator." The Senate bill was moving along--until Republican Senator Bob Bennett of Utah (who had the backing of other Senators) added an amendment giving Congress a 45-day window to veto the receivership. That, of course, completely undercut the notion that the government would no longer back the GSEs. Bennett's son is the deputy director of Fannie's Partnership Office in Utah.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortu...4040/index.htm

Not surprisingly, Bennett is one of the Republican Senators that voted for TARP the first time around too.

[don]

Re: National Homeownership Strategy

FIRE is bi-partisan .
You can take it to the bank.

[cjppjc]

Re: National Homeownership Strategy

FIRE is bi-partisan .
You can take it to the bank.

Fire Sucks. I'm so tired of it.

[Slimprofits]

Re: National Homeownership Strategy

I wonder why Criterion pulled this file.

[Slimprofits]

Re: National Homeownership Strategy

http://neweconomicperspectives.blogs...rs-annual.html

MONDAY, JULY 18, 2011

Council of Economic Advisors’ Annual Reports 2005-2007: No Crisis Here
By William K. Black

I decided to look at what President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) were saying in their annual reports for 2005-2007 about the massive real estate bubble, epidemic of accounting control fraud and mortgage fraud, the resultant rapidly developing financial crisis, and the great increase in economic inequality. Here’s what I found on these topics.

CEA Annual Report for 2005

N. Gregory Mankiw chaired the CEA.

Home ownership reached a record 69%. Home prices were surging. No discussion of the developing bubble. The CEA was enthused by the housing sector.

No mention of subprime or nonprime loans (or any variants, e.g., stated income).

There was no discussion of financial institutions’ risk.

There was no mention of Fannie or Freddie.

No mention of the FBI’s September 2004 warning that there was an “epidemic” of mortgage fraud or the FBI’s prediction that the fraud would cause a financial “crisis” if it were not stopped. No mention of mortgage fraud.

The report contained an extensive discussion of Internet frauds.

No use of the term “inequality,” but discussion of some of the factors increasing inequality. It does not discuss the perverse incentives arising from executive compensation tied to short-term reported firm income.


CEA Annual Report for 2006

No CEA chair listed because no replacement was in place after Bernanke’s resignation when he was appointed as the Fed’s Chair.

“During the past five years, home prices have risen at an annual rate of 9.2 percent.” The report argues that this was driven by increased demand and lower financing costs. It does not use the word “bubble,” but it argues that there is no bubble.

No mention of subprime or nonprime loans (or variants).

Chapter 9 of the report is devoted to financial institutions. The CEA argues that the U.S. has a “comparative advantage” in financial services. It premises its analysis of financial institutions on information asymmetries. It has a glaring false tone at the start of this discussion when it asks: “why do [banks] ask for so much information before making a loan….? By early 2006, of course, the striking change was how little information banks verified. The CEA explains the concepts of adverse selection, moral hazard. The explanation is critically flawed in that it ignores fraud despite the fact that adverse selection and moral hazard are exceptionally criminogenic. Again, the CEA ignores the FBI’s warnings of the growing mortgage fraud epidemic and ignores the risk of accounting control fraud by financial institutions and their agents. It notes that banks can take steps that are known to minimize adverse selection and moral hazard, but ignores the vital fact that the officers that controlled the nonprime lenders typically refused to take such steps (even though any honest businessman would do so) and that nonprime lending was vast and growing rapidly.

The CEA’s discussion of these topics is bizarre – it fails to recognize or address the implications of the fact that nonprime lenders are acting in a manner directly contrary to the economy theory the CEA argues explains why financial intermediaries exist. Under the CEA’s theories, the actions of the nonprime lenders are rational only for accounting control frauds. In conjunction with the FBI’s 2004 warnings that the growing fraud epidemic would cause a financial crisis this should have caused the CEA to issue a stark warning. Instead, the discussion is triumphal. The CEA even sees the tremendous increase in GDP devoted to the financial sector as desirable – proof that the U.S. has a “comparative advantage” in finance over the rest of the world. The CEA then claims that this advantage leads to exceptional U.S. growth and stability, helping to produce the “Great Moderation.” Deregulation and the rise of financial derivatives explain our comparative advantage in finance, the Great Moderation, and our superior economic growth. This self-congratulatory dementia achieves self-parody when the CEA lauds “cash-out-mortgage refinancing” for purportedly having “moderate[d] economic fluctuations.” The CEA’s discussion of “safety and soundness” regulation is overwhelmingly a highly generalized description of Basel I and II.

Chapter 9 discusses the need to combat identity fraud as one of its prime (and rare) examples of desirable forms of consumer protection, but it primarily emphasizes the dangers of consumer protection regulation and attacks the (repealed) Glass-Steagall Act.

Chapter 9 discusses Fannie and Freddie and their systemic risk. More precisely, it assumes that the systemic risk arises from prepayment risk – not credit risk. Accordingly, it explains that the administration wants Fannie and Freddie to expand their securitization of lower credit quality home loans (“for a wider range of mortgages”) while decreasing the number of home loans Fannie and Freddie hold in portfolio so that they can reduce their prepayment risk.

The report uses the term “inequality” and ascribes the growing inequality overwhelmingly to the distribution of skills. It does not discuss the perverse incentives arising from executive compensation tied to short-term reported firm income.

CEA Annual Report for 2007

Edward P. Lazear, CEA Chair.

The report does not mention the word “bubble” and continues to argue that the price increases in housing are due to rising demand for housing and lower financing costs. The CEA claims that the growth in home prices during the decade was “modest” in most metropolitan areas. The growth in most metropolitan areas was materially faster than GDP and population growth. The report admits that all housing indices fell sharply in 2006, but stresses that unemployment is falling and claims that the fall in housing may increase growth in other sectors by reducing “crowding out” effects in private investment.

The report does not mention mortgage fraud or accounting control fraud by lenders and their agents. It mentions fraud in two contexts. First, it states that it is possible that regulation could reduce fraud with respect to disaster insurance. Second, it notes that fraudulent papers can make it difficult for employers to avoid hiring undocumented immigrants.

No mention of subprime or nonprime loans (or variants).

The report does not mention Fannie or Freddie.

The report uses the term “inequality” and ascribes the growing inequality overwhelmingly to the distribution of skills. It does not discuss the perverse incentives arising from executive compensation tied to short-term reported firm income.

Conclusion

During the key period 2005-2007 when the epidemic of mortgage fraud driven by the accounting control frauds hyper-inflated the bubble and set the stage for the Great Recession the President’s Council of Economic Advisors were oblivious to the developing fraud epidemics, bubble, and the grave financial crisis they made inevitable absent urgent intervention by the regulators and prosecutors. President Bush’s economists in this era were blind to the factors that were making the financial environment so criminogenic (e.g., deregulation, desupervision, and de facto decriminalization plus grotesquely perverse executive and professional compensation). They typically did not make any relevant policy advice and when they did it was the worst possible advice warning of the grave dangers of regulations designed to reduce adverse selection. They were so blind that they did not even find it worthy of reporting that there were over a million “liar’s” loans being made annually.

The only CEA report that even attempted to address financial regulation discussed a theoclassical fantasy world that bore increasingly little relationship to the reality of nonprime mortgage lending. The tragedy is that “adverse selection” and lemon’s markets are superb building blocks for analyzing the frauds that drove the crisis and for understanding why only liars make a business out of making liar’s loans in the mortgage context. The CEA did not warn of any credit risk at Fannie and Freddie. Indeed, it urged them to make more loans to weaker credit risks as long as they securitized the loans. Securitization would not have reduced Fannie and Freddie’s credit risk.

[Slimprofits]

Re: National Homeownership Strategy

Here it is, full text (.pdf) of the original document that we know of: National homeownership strategy. U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, May 1995, via the website of Global Urban Development: http://www.globalurban.org/National_...p_Strategy.pdf


and, from 1996, HUD's Community Development Program, consolidated annual report: http://archives.hud.gov/offices/cpd/...gress/1996.pdf

both files too large too attach