Mark A. Calabria, is director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute. Before joining Cato in 2009, he spent six years as a member of the senior professional staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. In that position, Calabria handled issues related to housing, mortgage finance, economics, banking and insurance for Ranking Member Richard Shelby (R-AL). Prior to his service on Capitol Hill, Calabria served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Regulatory Affairs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and also held a variety of positions at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, the National Association of Home Builders and the National Association of Realtors. Calabria has also been a Research Associate with the U.S. Census Bureau's Center for Economic Studies. He has extensive experience evaluating the impacts of legislative and regulatory proposals on financial and real estate markets, with particular emphasis on how policy changes in Washington affect low and moderate income households. He holds a doctorate in economics from George Mason University. http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MarkCalabria http://media.townhall.com/TownHall/icons/TH-feed-icon-128x128.gif http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MarkCalabria TownHall.com, Where your opinion counts. 128 Copyright (c) 2013 Townhall.com, A Salem Communications Web. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED jim.dearras@townhall.com (Jim De Arras) Tue, 12 Feb 2013 05:01:00 GMT Tue, 12 Feb 2013 05:01:00 GMT http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss RSS.NET: http://www.rssdotnet.com/ It would be far more accurate to label U.S. federal homeownership policy, U.S. mortgage policy. For the primary means of “extending” homeownership, via federal policy, has been the... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MarkCalabria/2013/02/12/the-long-run-decline-in-actual-homeownership-n1510358 6e4a77c8-7099-40a7-8137-21317e4538a8 Tue, 12 Feb 2013 05:01:00 GMT Earlier this week the Inspector General (IG) of the Federal Housing Finance Agency released a report documenting the current pay levels of mid-level executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, those mortgage... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MarkCalabria/2013/02/04/fannie-mae-employees-keep-fat-paychecks-at-taxpayers-expense-n1504358 2ea39d8c-7905-46b0-b5eb-890ca4371694 Mon, 04 Feb 2013 05:01:00 GMT Yesterday in the New York Times, Josh Rosner, co-author of Reckless Endangerment, asked one of the questions that almost everyone in Washington is avoiding: how do the taxpayers get back their money, currently about... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MarkCalabria/2012/11/25/getting_our_money_back_from_fannie_and_freddie 08f52830-91b7-41fe-b2d6-375c57a1e58a Sun, 25 Nov 2012 05:01:00 GMT The most glaring absence during the hard-fought campaign between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney was any offer of substance regarding the housing market. It was, after all, a housing bubble-driven financial... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MarkCalabria/2012/11/19/in_obamas_second_term_what_will_happen_to_the_housing_market d6dd4f15-9f6e-4111-92e3-7bb62ff804f3 Mon, 19 Nov 2012 05:01:00 GMT Before talking about either the impact or the need for Sarbanes-Oxley, I think it would be helpful to briefly review what the Act covers. Despite all the talk about transparency and disclosure, most of Sarbanes-Oxley is... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MarkCalabria/2012/11/11/sarbanesoxley_10_years_later adb57fc2-5941-44ec-bfd4-342c89617186 Sun, 11 Nov 2012 05:01:00 GMT In yesterday's defense of President Obama's economic record, Alan Blinder starts, "[A]fter the frightening financial panic and deep recession triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008," thereby... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MarkCalabria/2012/11/03/the_lehman_trigger_myth_continues 5e3637f0-f8d0-4214-9057-0750051aab14 Sat, 03 Nov 2012 04:01:00 GMT A fundamental question with both the Bush and Obama approaches to the mortgage foreclosure crisis is to what extent are policies simply putting off the inevitable? Are "permanent" solutions being offered, or are we... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MarkCalabria/2012/10/22/over_half_of_foreclosures_now_repeats 4bd17f95-062e-4c9e-ab07-7543e5a5e717 Mon, 22 Oct 2012 04:01:00 GMT The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recently marked its first year in operation. Given the unusual structure of the CFPB - one that I believe reduces transparency and accountability - and the questionable... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MarkCalabria/2012/09/12/the_consumer_financial_protection_bureau_problem_or_solution d56ff28b-886d-463a-a4d4-f076d90cd38b Wed, 12 Sep 2012 04:01:00 GMT Rumor has it that Democrats will include, at their up-coming convention, a proposal to increase the minimum wage. As documented in a recent Cato study, such a policy is likely to increase unemployment, especially as I... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MarkCalabria/2012/09/03/democrats_to_propose_increasing_unemployment_at_convention 5346fcc5-4bb7-40d9-aaa0-ecb94ae14972 Mon, 03 Sep 2012 04:01:00 GMT You have to give Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner some credit for spin: today the Treasury announced "Further Steps to Expedite Wind Down of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac." The only problem is that the steps announced... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MarkCalabria/2012/08/19/geithner_favors_fannie_mae_debtholders_over_taxpayers__again 9b42f6de-d0ce-4baf-a9b3-77c952878319 Sun, 19 Aug 2012 04:01:00 GMT After two years of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a few of the landmines hidden in its hundreds of pages are starting to come to the surface. Under Section 1071, Subtitle G, labeled... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MarkCalabria/2012/08/05/doddfranks_smallbusiness_lending_time_bomb 32e6e25b-1c3c-4ea1-b01d-c720cb9ba060 Sun, 05 Aug 2012 04:01:00 GMT I have to admit I have yet to view an entire episode of Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom, as I find a sufficient amount of fiction on the real news. As Cato scholar Trevor Burris recently illustrated, the show plays pretty... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MarkCalabria/2012/07/30/did_glasssteagall_put_a_man_on_the_moon 9019bade-76bd-4008-9788-0623765b5301 Mon, 30 Jul 2012 04:01:00 GMT Earlier this week University of Chicago Professor Luigi Zingales offered an interesting, although I suspect commonly held, reason for his conversion to supporting a new "Glass-Steagall." For those who don't follow... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MarkCalabria/2012/06/25/are_smaller_banks_better_for_politics 36a7d088-77c6-4e9d-b3f0-48722f150830 Mon, 25 Jun 2012 04:01:00 GMT Having one's read of the law vindicated by the Supreme Court is always a nice feeling, even if I had to wait about a decade. From 2002 to 2003, I managed the HUD office which administered the Real Estate Settlement... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MarkCalabria/2012/06/05/supreme_court_spanks_hud e4b87115-c2b7-4c49-a843-b2b1c36405fb Tue, 05 Jun 2012 04:01:00 GMT Unsurprisingly, President Obama and others have used the recent $2 billion loss by JPMorgan Chase as a call for more regulation. Obviously, our existing regulations have worked so well that more can only be... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MarkCalabria/2012/05/29/jpmorgan_losses_do_not_make_the_case_for_regulation 95f51910-6a03-4944-8006-12e89b783462 Tue, 29 May 2012 04:01:00 GMT