Money and Computing
Journey to a Profession: The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Women
In high school, after reading novels by C. P. Snow describing academic life at Cambridge University in England, I decided that I wanted to be a professor (little did I know that this vision of academic life was nothing like reality, at least in the US). In sophomore year, my inner-city high school biology teacher taught us about the experiments of Jan Baptist van Helmont (1579–1644) showing that a piece of soiled cloth mixed with wheat yielded mouse pups after a 21-day incubation. This sealed the deal — I wanted to be a biologist. more »
Congressional Hearings, Bills Passed and Introduced: Combat Online Predators Act, End Banking for Human Traffickers Act, Developing Maternity Care Quality
Bills Introduced: The importance of reducing the rate of maternal mortality and morbidity among Black women; A bill to address the use of opioids and substance use disorders with respect to pregnant women and babies; A bill to prohibit the pricing of consumer products and services that are substantially similar if such products or services are priced differently based on the gender of the individuals for whose use the products are intended or marketed or for whom the services are performed or offered; a bill to require the secretary of Veterans Affairs to provide child care assistance to veterans receiving certain training or vocational rehabilitation. more »
Federal Reserve Research, Warning: Don’t Infer Regional Inflation Differences from House Price Changes
House price growth has varied significantly nationwide since the end of the Great Recession in 2009: In some metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), prices have grown as quickly as 7 percent annually, while others have seen prices decline almost as quickly, with many more MSAs falling somewhere in between. Since households spend more on housing than any other good or service, we would expect that inflation rates would show the same variation. They do not. more »
A decade after housing bust, mortgage industry is on shaky ground, experts warn: "There is great fragility. These lenders could disappear from the map”
The ripple effects of a market collapse would be severe, and taxpayers would potentially be on the hook for losses posted by failed mortgage companies. In addition to loans backed by the FHA or VA, the government is exposed through Ginnie Mae, the federal agency that provides payment guarantees when mortgages are pooled and sold as securities to investors. The mortgage companies are supposed to bear the losses if these securitized loans go bad. But if those companies go under, the government “will probably bear the majority of the increased credit and operational losses,” the paper concludes. Ginnie Mae is especially vulnerable because almost 60 percent of the dollar volume of the mortgages it guarantees comes from nonbank lenders. more »