Commentary

This paper was presented at the conference "Policies to Promote Affordable Housing," cosponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and New York University's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, February 7, 2002. It was part of Session 4: Housing Subsidies and Finance, and is a commentary on "Comparing the costs of federal housing assistance programs" by Denise DiPasquale, Dennis Fricke and Daniel Garcia-Diaz.Housing - Finance ; Rent ; Housing policy ; Housing - Prices ; Construction industry ; Housing subsidies

The Ongoing Financial Upheaval: Understanding the Sources and Way Out

The present period of financial instability is also likely to become known as the end of an era; an era of economic calm and policy consensus on ways to maintain market stability. After World War II, the federal government operated on the Keynesian principles that the right mix of spending, regulation, and interest rates could tame economic cycles and eliminate surges of unemployment. In this period, now known as the Great Moderation, we assumed that we knew how to prevent economic crises, such as the recurrence of the Great Depression. However, it is clear that those principles were erroneous as the economy has entered a lesser, but still severe downturn; the Great Recession. This paper looks at the sources of the ongoing economic crisis and points to the unique role in its origins of real estate asset bubbles and mispriced credit, not only in the origin of this crisis, but of many financial crises. An analysis of the data points to the role of mispriced mortgage backed securities (MBS) in the spread of aggressive mortgage products and the unwarranted price speculation that resulted in massive foreclosures. In turn, the paper addresses the source of mispriced risk in MBS as incomplete markets in real estate and non-tradability of MBS and related securities, which ultimately led to the collapse of financial system, threatening global economic health. The paper also suggests corrective measures that can and should be taken to assist the short and long term recovery.

Spitzer Space Telescope Observations of Low Mass X-ray Binaries

We present preliminary results from our archival Spitzer Space Telescope program aimed at characterizing the mid-IR properties of compact objects, both isolated and in binary systems, i.e. white dwarfs, X-ray binaries, cataclysmic variables, and magnetars. Most of these sources are too faint at mid-IR wavelengths to be observable from the ground, so this study provides the very first comprehensive look at the mid-IR emission of these objects. Here we present our results for the low mass X-ray binaries. We considered all of the systems listed in the most recent catalog of Liu et al. (2007) that have known optical counterparts. The particular goals of our projects encompass: to establish the mid-IR spectral energy distribution, to search for the signatures of jets, circumbinary disks, low mass or planetary companions and debris disks, and to study the local environment of these sources.Comment: 6 pages, updated and expanded version of article to appear in Proceedings of "A Population Explosion: The Nature and Evolution of X-ray Binaries in Diverse Environments", 28 Oct - 2 Nov, St. Pete Beach, FL; eds. R.M. Bandyopadhyay, S. Wachter, D. Gelino, C.R. Gelino; AIP Conference Proceedings Serie

The housing finance revolution

Housing ; Housing - Prices ; Mortgages

Chandra Localizations of LMXBs: IR Counterparts and their Properties

We present new Chandra observations of the low mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) X1624−490, X1702−429, and X1715−321 and the search for their Infrared (IR) counterparts. We also report on early results from our dedicated IR survey of LMXBs. The goal of this program is to investigate whether IR counterparts can be identified through unique IR colors and to trace the origin of the IR emission in these systems

A World of Fields

Trope ontology is exposed and confronted with the question where one trope ends and another begins. It is argued that tropes do not have determinate boundaries, it is arbitrary how tropes are carved up. An ontology, which I call field ontology, is proposed which takes this into account. The material world consists of a certain number of fields, each of which is extended over all of space. It is shown how field ontology can also tackle the problem of determin-able properties and the problem of completeness of things

Recessions and the Cost of Job Loss

We develop new evidence on the cumulative earnings losses associated with job displacement, drawing on longitudinal Social Security records for U.S. workers from 1974 to 2008. In present value terms, men lose an average of 1.4 years of pre-displacement earnings if displaced in mass-layoff events that occur when the national unemployment rate is below 6 percent. They lose a staggering 2.8 years of pre-displacement earnings if displaced when the unemployment rate exceeds 8 percent. These results reflect discounting at a 5% annual rate over 20 years after displacement. We also document large cyclical movements in the incidence of job loss and job displacement and present evidence on how worker anxieties about job loss, wage cuts and job opportunities respond to contemporaneous economic conditions. Finally, we confront leading models of unemployment fluctuations with evidence on the present value earnings losses associated with job displacement. The model of Mortensen and Pissarides (1994) extended to include search on the job generates present value losses only one-fourth as large as observed losses. Moreover, present value losses in the model vary little with aggregate conditions at the time of displacement, unlike the pattern in the data.