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+The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has long been plagued by scandals, mismanagement, and policy failures. Most recently, HUD’s subsidies and failed oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac helped to inflate the housing bubble, which ultimately burst and cascaded into a major financial crisis. Given this giant policy blunder, now is a good time to review the many failures in HUD leadership over the years. This study discusses how HUD officials operate within a highly politicized environment, which is heavily influenced by the groups that HUD subsidizes and regulates, including the housing industry, financial institutions, and community activists. At the same time, HUD leaders often put their personal goals ahead of those of the general public. Recent HUD secretaries have focused on gaining private benefits while doing favors for business interests and political insiders. These leadership failures are illustrated in this study by profiles of four recent HUD secretaries: Samuel Pierce in the 1980s, Henry Cisneros and Andrew Cuomo in the 1990s, and Alphonso Jackson in the 2000s. These public officials touted seemingly noble goals while pursuing personal and political agendas that ended up harming taxpayers and the economy. Even if there were a need for federal housing programs, experience has shown that HUD could not implement such programs without mismanagement, cronyism, and other abuses. Federal housing policies illustrate broader realities of government intervention. When making decisions, policymakers usually have selfinterested goals that conflict with the broader interests of taxpayers and the general public. Furthermore, their visions for improving society with federal programs usually backfire because of the distortions that those programs create in the economy. Housing was traditionally a private concern, and it should be made so again because government involvement has done great damage. Alas, policymakers have not learned this lesson even after the recent housing boom and bust. Since the housing and financial meltdowns, federal intervention in housing markets has substantially increased, thus paving the way for further troubles down the road for taxpayers and the economy. |
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+While the economic contraction is apparently slowing in the advanced industrial countries and may reach bottom in the not-too-distant future, it's only beginning to gain momentum in the developing world, which was spared the earliest effects of the global meltdown. Because the crisis was largely precipitated by a collapse of the housing market in the United States and the resulting disintegration of financial products derived from the "securitization" of questionable mortgages, most developing nations were unaffected by the early stages of the meltdown, for the simple reason that they possessed few such assets. But now, as the wealthier nations cease investing in the developing world or acquiring its exports, the crisis is hitting them with a vengeance. On top of this, conditions are deteriorating at a time when severe drought is affecting many key food-producing regions and poor farmers lack the wherewithal to buy seeds, fertilizers, and fuel. The likely result: A looming food crisis in many areas hit hardest by the global economic meltdown. Until now, concern over the human impact of the global crisis has largely been focused — understandably so — on unemployment and economic hardship in the United States, Europe, and former Soviet Union. Many stories have appeared on the devastating impact of plant closings, bankruptcies, and home foreclosures on families and communities in these parts of the world. Much less coverage has been devoted to the meltdown's impact on people in the developing world. As the crisis spreads to the poorer countries, however, it's likely that people in these areas will experience hardships every bit as severe as those in the wealthier countries — and, in many cases, far worse. The greatest worry is that most of the gains achieved in eradicating poverty over the last decade or so will be wiped out, forcing tens or hundreds of millions of people from the working class and the lower rungs of the middle class back into the penury from which they escaped. Equally worrisome is the risk of food scarcity in these areas, resulting in widespread malnutrition, hunger, and starvation. All this is sure to produce vast human misery, sickness, and death, but could also result in social and political unrest of various sorts, including riot, rebellion, and ethnic strife. The president, Congress, or the mainstream media are not, for the most part, discussing these perils. As before, public interest remains focused on the ways in which the crisis is affecting the United States and the other major industrial powers. But the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and U.S. intelligence officials, in three recent reports, are paying increased attention to the prospect of a second economic shockwave, this time affecting the developing world. Sinking Back Into Penury In late February, the World Bank staff prepared a background paper for the Group of 20 (G-20) finance ministers meeting held near London on March 13 and 14. Entitled "Swimming Against the Tide: How Developing Countries Are Coping with the Global Crisis," it provides a preliminary assessment of the meltdown's impact on low-income countries (LICs). The picture, though still hazy, is one of deepening gloom. Most LICs were shielded from the initial impact of the sudden blockage in private capital flows because they have such limited access to such markets. "But while slower to emerge," the report notes, "the impact of the crisis on LICs has been no less significant as the effects have spread through other channels." For example, "many LIC governments rely on disproportionately on revenue from commodity exports, the prices of which have declined sharply along with global demand." Likewise, foreign direct investment is falling, particularly in the natural resource sectors. On top of this, remittances from immigrants in the wealthier countries to their families back home have dropped, erasing an important source of income to poor communities. Add all this up, and it's likely that "the slowdown in growth will likely deepen the deprivation of the existing poor." In many LICs, moreover, "large numbers of people are clustered just above the poverty line and are therefore particularly vulnerable to economic volatility and temporary slowdowns." As the intensity of the crisis grows, more and more of these people will lose their jobs or their other sources of income (such as those all-important remittances) and so be pushed from above the poverty line to beneath it. The resulting outcome: "The economic crisis is projected to increase poverty by around 46 million people in 2009." The picture provided in the Bank's G-20 report turns even darker when turning to an assessment of the capacity of affected LICs to address the needs of all these newly impoverished people. Because so much of the income of these countries derives from the sale of commodities — the demand for which has significantly diminished (thus lowering prices) — and because foreign loans and investment have largely dried up, the governments involved have precious little money left to provide emergency services for their country's growing legions of poor. The implications are ominous. "Absent ~~public~~ assistance, households may be forced into the additional sales of assets on which their livelihoods depend ~~e.g., farm implements and livestock~~, withdrawal of their children from school, reduced reliance on health care, inadequate diets and resulting malnutrition." The long-run consequences of these desperate actions can be severe: "The decline in nutritional and health status among children who suffer from reduced (or lower-quality) food consumption can be irreversible." Already, "estimates suggest that the food crisis has...caused the number of people suffering from malnutrition to rise by 44 million." These estimates — an increase in those forced into poverty by 46 million and those suffering from malnutrition by 44 million — far exceed anything reported anywhere else. And they must be viewed as preliminary figures, subject to recalibration based on the duration and severity of the global meltdown. If the Bank's prognostications on the likely impacts of the crisis on the LICs prove accurate, these figures could rise much higher. Looming Food Insecurity The spring growing season has now begun in many areas of the world, and worried agricultural experts are already calculating the p |