Preeti Vissa

If one man can be described as absolutely key to solving the ongoing foreclosure crisis -- and thus not only helping millions of struggling homeowners but also stabilizing the neighborhoods where they live -- it is Edward DeMarco, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The rest of the country...

My job involves spending most of my time trying to figure out how those with the least can begin to build a bit of wealth and start to acquire a small piece of the American dream. That means trying to find ways to level the playing field, so that all...

The phrase "knowledge is power" dates back to at least the seventeenth century, and it's as true today as it was then. But today, technology has become the essential portal to information, and information technology has potential to be a great social and economic equalizer -- but only if we...

One intriguing question from the subprime mortgage meltdown and ensuing financial crisis is: Could the crisis have been averted if our financial regulators were more plugged into the communities that were hit first and hardest?

There's a good case to be made that it could have been. But, as a...

You hardly hear anyone in the media -- not to mention any of the presidential candidates -- talking about it, but the foreclosure crisis isn't even halfway over with. And a good portion of what you may have heard or read about it is wrong.

Those are the disturbing conclusions...

I'm about to become a mom. If all goes as expected, I'll be bringing a baby boy into the world sometime in the first week of January. To say it's an overwhelming experience is both completely obvious and a pretty severe understatement.

In practical terms, it probably means I'll be...

Right after Thanksgiving, Bloomberg News broke a very big story that didn't get nearly the attention it deserved: In late 2008, at the same time the controversial TARP bank bailout was happening, the Federal Reserve was lending trillions of dollars to many of the very same institutions, helping...

Why are top executives at government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac getting millions in bonuses while struggling homeowners get little or no help?

I've written before about the need for principal reduction to help homeowners fighting to keep their homes. Not only would this aid millions...

Issues that affect our lives don't happen in a vacuum. Everything affects everything else, and there's no area where that's truer than health and access to care. So I'm going to take a slight detour from the financial and economic issues I write about most of the time to say...

As public anger at Wall Street greed boils over in the form of protests spreading across the nation, the Federal Reserve Board is poised to allow creation of yet another "too big to fail" bank. Worse, that bank has a record of precisely the sort of...

As I wrote last time, a favorite right-wing talking point in recent years has been the claim that federal efforts to promote lending and investment in underserved communities, such as the Community Reinvestment Act, caused the subprime mortgage collapse and our ongoing recession. Not only is...

There may be no subject that has generated more nonsense from politicians and pundits than the subprime mortgage crisis and housing market collapse. Recently, a new book landed on my desk that cuts through the bull and obliterates a pile of widely-propagated falsehoods.

It's an article of faith among many...

Anyone wondering why Congress has approval ratings that hover somewhere between cockroaches and the bubonic plague might want to check out the Sept. 6 Senate Banking Committee hearing on the nomination of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

This...

Goldman Sachs has made a lot of bets that paid off handsomely over the years -- for example, its bet against the subprime housing market that gained the Wall Street giant $4 billion as the housing bubble imploded in 2007. One of the firm's biggest bets has...

Pursuant to the recent debt ceiling agreement, Congress has begun setting up what's officially called the Joint Special Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. Much of the speculation about what this committee will do has centered on two questions: Will it cut essential programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social...

A rather odd study from the Federal Reserve got a smattering of press coverage in recent weeks. The overall message seems to be that hey, foreclosure's not so bad. As the story on MSN Money put it, "For those forced to move, it's not always for...

My head is spinning from the news in recent days. We've had glowing reports that "it's a new day in California" because new foreclosures are declining, even as Reuters reports that "robo-signing" -- firms cranking out thousands of foreclosure documents signed by people who never read...

For some time, I and other advocates have been calling for more help for struggling homeowners facing foreclosure. The good news is that California now has a program up and running that may actually do some good, called Keep Your Home California. Unfortunately, hardly anyone seems to know...

May's drop in new home sales is just the latest sign that the housing market continues to be bleak, as it has every right to be with a "shadow inventory" of 1.7 million impending foreclosures hanging over it. But there is some good news: Discussion of the need...

Banks are in the news a lot lately. The foreclosure crisis rumbles on, dragging the housing market down and threatening a double-dip recession for the whole economy. Debates in Congress about the financial reform law passed last year are heating up again. What banks do and how they are run...