Improving America’s Housing Finance System: Strengths to Build On, Weaknesses to Address

Efforts to improve America’s $14 trillion housing finance system should start by candidly identifying the system’s great strengths and its considerable weaknesses and then developing implementable plans that build on the former and address the latter. In his final talk as a senior industry fellow, Don Layton, who spent seven years at the heart of that system as CEO of Freddie Mac, will take on this challenge. Drawing on the many center working papers and blog posts he has written in the past three years as a fellow, Layton will assess the current system and suggest promising approaches for moving it forward.