Proposals for the Privatization of the Housing GSEs

October 27, 2003

Speaker Biographies

Bert Ely is a financial institutions and monetary policy consultant. The principal at Ely & Company, Inc., in Alexandria, Virginia, he has specialized in deposit insurance and banking-structure issues since 1981. In 1986, he was one of the first to publicly predict a taxpayer bailout of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation. He monitors conditions in the banking and thrift industries, the politics of the credit-allocation process, and issues concerning monetary policy and the payments system.

Thomas H. Stanton

is a Washington, D.C.-based attorney. His practice relates to the capacity of public institutions to deliver services effectively, with specialties relating to government organization and program design, financial regulation, government corporations, government-sponsored enterprises, and privatization. Mr. Stanton is a former member of the federal Senior Executive Service. He chairs the Standing Panel on Executive Organization and Management at the National Academy of Public Administration and is a fellow of the Center for the Study of American Government at Johns Hopkins University, where he teaches on the law of public institutions. Mr. Stanton’s writings include a book on government-sponsored enterprises, A State of Risk (HarperCollins, 1991), and many articles. Mr. Stanton also has written Government-Sponsored Enterprises: Mercantilist Companies in the Modern World (AEI Press 2002).

Peter J. Wallison

joined AEI in 1999 as a resident fellow and as the codirector of AEI’s program on financial market deregulation. As a partner of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, he practiced banking, corporate, and financial law in the firm’s Washington and New York offices. As the general counsel of the Treasury Department from 1981 to 1985, Mr. Wallison helped develop the Reagan administration’s proposals for deregulating the financial services industry. During 1986 and 1987, Mr. Wallison was counsel to President Ronald Reagan. He is the author of Back from the Brink, a proposal for a system of private deposit insurance; coauthor of Nationalizing Mortgage Risk: The Growth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; and The GAAP Gap: Corporate Disclosure in the Age of the Internet; and the editor of Serving Two Masters Yet out of Control: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Optional Federal Chartering of Insurance Companies, all of which have been published by the AEI Press. More recently, Mr. Wallison is the author of Ronald Reagan: The Power of Conviction and the Success of His Presidency, published in December 2002 by Westview Press.

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