News and Issues

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 »

Jo Freeman writes: March 24 had a milder flavor than most protests, in part because the teenagers who organized it had parental approval and lots of adult support. Even the cops were cool; police would prefer to be the only ones to carry guns. The DC National Guard blocked the streets and cops directed traffic elsewhere. If the issue of gun violence had not been so grave, it would have felt like a celebration rather than a protest. Staff from the Democratic National Committee and volunteers from the League of Women Voters asked participants to sign statements that they would register to vote. The DNC passed out stickers to young people with the year they would reach voting age. more »

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 »

Pennsylvania is one of 41 states where some counties and cities use election equipment that is more than a decade old, according to the New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice. Older machines are more likely to malfunction or break down on Election Day, causing long lines and potentially dissuading some people from casting their ballots. Some older machines also are susceptible to wireless malware attacks, even if they are not directly connected to the internet, or have removable memory devices a hacker might manipulate. more »