The Rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – Module D: Treasury’s GSE MBS Purchase Program

As the housing crisis escalated during the second half of 2007, two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), occupied an increasingly central role in the secondary mortgage market, purchasing a greater percentage of new mortgages as private securitization rapidly contracted. As their importance in this market grew, the two GSEs also began to suffer billion-dollar losses, inciting concerns that they might not be able to stay solvent throughout the remainder of the crisis. On September 6, 2008, fearing the systemic consequences of the two firms’ failures, the GSEs’ new regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), took both entities into indefinite conservatorship as one step of a four-part rescue of the GSEs, which included the US Treasury’s establishment of a GSE mortgage-backed securities (MBS) purchase program (GSE MBS Program). This case examines the GSE MBS Program, pursuant to which Treasury purchased $225 billion in GSE MBS in the open market, and finds it difficult to quantify the program’s exact impact given the simultaneous implementation of other measures for the GSEs as well as the Federal Reserve’s later adoption of its own MBS purchase program

Non Equivalent: The State of Education in New York Citys Hasidic Yeshivas

Yaffed was founded to address the lack of secular education in many ultra-Orthodox schools. Tens of thousands of children attending these schools, also known as yeshivas, are being denied the education to which they are entitled under New York State law. For more than five years we have worked to educate public officials about this matter. Throughout, city and state education officials have demonstrated ignorance, disregard, and gross incompetence and in all these years have done little or nothing to improve education at these institutions.This report attempts to change that by increasing public awareness about ultra-Orthodox education.It describes the lack of secular education in many ultra-Orthodox and Hasidic yeshivas and the government inaction that has come at the expense of tens of thousands of children. It exposes the array of funding that the government doles out to yeshivas while fully aware that these schools arenot meeting standards. Finally, it sheds light on the grave consequences for the citizens of New York City and New York State were this problem to remain unchecked. We hope that the information provided here will enable readers to stand up for these children and for the proper use of their own tax dollars.After years of broken promises on the part of New York City and State education departments —after phantom investigations and reports, missed deadlines with no explanation, and promisedimprovements that never occurred — it is time the matter is addressed so that tens of thousands of current and future students at those yeshivas receive the education to which they are entitled. It is our sincere hope that this report will make that happen sooner. We invite the public to join us in demanding change

The Great Decoupling: The Disconnection Between Criminal Offending and Experience of Arrest Across Two Cohorts

Our study explores the arrest experiences of two generational cohorts—those entering adulthood on either side of a large shift in American policing. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979 and 1997), we find a stark increase in arrest odds among the later generation at every level of offending, suggesting a decoupling between contact with the justice system and criminal conduct. Furthermore, this decoupling became racially inflected. Blacks had a much higher probability of arrest at the start of the twenty-first century than both blacks of the generation prior and whites of the same generation. The criminal justice system, we argue, slipped from one in which arrest was low and strongly linked to offending to one where a substantial share of Americans experienced arrest without committing a crime