Tag: Housing

How Inequality Stymies Monetary Policy and What to Do About It

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By Karen Petrou

  • In a dangerous double-whammy, monetary policy not only makes America even less economically equal, but economic inequality also frustrates monetary-policy transmission.
  • Thus, recessions are deeper and longer, reversing the good-times income gains central banks take as proof that their policies are not dis-equalizing even as the wealth divide grows ever wider.
  • Because monetary policy when rightly judged in terms of both income and wealth adversely affects economic equality and inequality stymies monetary policy, we won’t have macroeconomic-effective monetary policy until we have equality-focused monetary policy.
Continue reading “How Inequality Stymies Monetary Policy and What to Do About It” →

The Low-Income High-Risk Myth

~ Karen Petrou ~ 2 Comments

By Karen Petrou

In the wake of the great financial crisis, an axiom of consumer finance is that high-risk borrowers are disproportionately lower-income people.  Indeed, the term “subprime” has become a virtual synonym for the lower-income households generally designated with low credit scores and, thus, the subprime sobriquet.  However, a growing body of research demonstrates conclusively that subprime borrowers were not the villains of the mortgage debacle at the heart of the 2008 cataclysm:  it turns out that prime borrowers behaving in subpar ways defaulted far more often than low-income households trying to become homeowners. Continue reading “The Low-Income High-Risk Myth” →

It Wasn’t the Butler

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By Karen and Basil Petrou

Summary

In the raft of crisis retrospectives released during the ten-year anniversary of the Great Financial Crisis, general consensus continues the conventional wisdom that subprime mortgages were the spark of the subsequent conflagration.  A new study from the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and New York mobilizes formidable data to show that hapless subprime purchase-money borrowers were victims, not perpetrators.  The borrowers who did the damage that precipitated the debacle were, they find, prime borrowers whipped into a speculative frenzy by the combination of low rates and flagrantly-unwise mortgage lending.  Theoretically, post-crisis reforms have solved for this.  Actually, maybe not given the exodus of mortgage securitization from regulated entities, sharp rise in cash-out refis, and investment-focused borrowing with house prices well above affordability thresholds in many major markets.  Continue reading “It Wasn’t the Butler” →

How the Other Half Goes Broke

~ Karen Petrou ~ 4 Comments

By Karen Shaw Petrou and Matthew Shaw

In our last blog post, we laid out the most telling inequality-data points from an important new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis which for the first time runs from 1949 to 2016 and adds many critical equality measures.  These data show more decisively than ever not only that wealth inequality in 2016 is the worst since at least the Second World War, but also that this is due to who holds the assets that have gained the most.  Since which assets return how much is due now in large part to post-crisis monetary and regulatory policy rather than to market forces and broader macroeconomic trends, it’s post-crisis policy – not forces from beyond – that increasingly dictates U.S. economic equality. Continue reading “How the Other Half Goes Broke” →

Baseball Cards for the Equality Game?

~ Karen Petrou ~ 1 Comment

By Karen Shaw Petrou

Although the Federal Reserve resolutely rebuffs suggestions – mine included – that it’s exacerbated U.S. economic inequality, the Bank of England has been forced by public outcry to deal directly with its own inequality impact.  Reacting to strong public protest and withering fire from the Prime Minister, the BoE recently released not only a report denying the charges itself, but now also an exculpatory speech by Andrew Haldane, its influential chief economist.  Clearly feeling the heat, the Bank of England has even come up with a way to sell its positive message:  personalized “scorecards” proving to the skeptical citizenry that it’s better off than personal economic problems might lead it to believe.  Continue reading “Baseball Cards for the Equality Game?” →