Subprime Mortgages America's Latest Boom and Bust

Over the past decade, a new mortgage market offering loans at low interest rates and for little or no money down has given low-income people an opportunity to pursue the American dream of homeownership. The resulting wave in home buying promised to stabilize neighborhoods and families, boost the economy, and reduce crime. In many ways, the optimists were correct, but now, less than fifteen years later, the subprime mortgage market is collapsing, threatening to take the rest of the housing sector along with it.Subprime Mortgages: America's Latest Boom and Bust analyzes how the subprime market emerged, why it is in crisis, and how we can reform public policy to avert disaster. An attendant examination of the rental market also offers recommendations for shoring up what may be the best housing option for some families.

Edward M. Gramlich is the Richard B. Fisher Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. In 2005û06, Dr. Gramlich was interim provost at the University of Michigan. From 1997 to 2005, he was a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He is the Richard A. Musgrave Collegiate Professor Emeritus of Public Policy and has served as dean of the University of Michigan's School of Public Policy. He also served as chair of the Quadrennial Advisory Council on Social Security, first deputy and then acting director of the Congressional Budget Office, director of the Policy Research Division of the Office of Economic Opportunity, and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.Dr. Gramlich wrote a popular text on benefit-cost analysis that is now in its second edition (A Guide to Benefit-Cost Analysis, Waveland Press, 1997). He also wrote Is It Time to Reform Social Security? (University of Michigan Press, 1998). His work for the Urban Institute Press includes The Government We Deserve: Responsive Democracy and Changing Expectations (edited with C. Eugene Steuerle, Hugh Heclo, and Demetra Smith Nightingale, 1998). His other books and articles cover macroeconomic topics, housing, budget policy, income redistribution, fiscal federalism, and the economics of professional sports.