Insider's Game

Selected writings by David Fiderer

Treasury’s Claims About Fannie and Freddie Need A Reality Check

November 13, 2015

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are irredeemable failures, which must be abolished as the first step in any type of housing finance reform — if current and former officials of the U.S. Department of the Treasury are to be believed.   Going back to Timothy Geithner’s tenure as Secretary of the Treasury, and continuing to […]

GSE Conservatorships: A Washington Post Article Gets A Reality Check

June 11, 2015

To this day, I remain mystified by the widespread belief that Henry Paulson always tells the truth. To me it’s pretty obvious that the tail wags the dog in his recitation of events concerning the government takeovers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Just about everybody accepts his story as the official record, which I […]

Ed DeMarco Redefined His Job Description as GSE “Conservator”

December 16, 2014

Edward DeMarco declared: "Restoring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is not the solution." Except his job was to restore Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Pushing The Big Lie at Elite Business Schools

November 3, 2014

Calomiris and Haber embrace The Big Lie by tracing everything to Bill Clinton’s grand strategy of income redistribution as a response to economic inequality or as a sop to community activists at ACORN.

Private Mortgage Securitizations Have a Math Problem

October 6, 2014

According Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and many other others, the moribund market for private-label residential mortgage-backed securities needs reviving. Well, nobody should not get his hopes up, for one simple reason. The math doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked for 20 years.   More precisely, the original premise of PLS has not stood the test of time. The […]

How Regulators Contrived the Fannie Mae “Accounting Scandal”

March 5, 2014

The Fannie Mae “accounting scandal,” is an especially timely parable to remind us how easily members of Congress and the media are bamboozled by an onslaught of doublespeak.

Do Fannie and Freddie Need Reforming?

December 11, 2013

What was it about the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that caused problems in the first place? Critics' answers seem slippery, disconnected from empirical data.

Investors say, “Fool me once…” to the moral hazard of RMBS

September 12, 2013

Through bitter experience, bond purchasers learned about the moral hazard embedded in private RMBS and their grossly inadequate legal protections.