Moving Forward: The Future of Consumer Credit and Mortgage Finance-A National Symposium

In February 2010, the Center hosted a two-day symposium that considered the future of consumer credit and mortgage finance in the light of the financial crisis and lessons learned from it. The symposium was supported by the Ford Foundation, Freddie Mac, and NeighborWorks America, and the goal was to explore how public policy can facilitate access to credit for low-income households that is not unduly risky or costly. 

The symposium was built around 15 papers commissioned from leading academics and practitioners in these fields. Beyond the papers themselves, the value of the symposium also consisted of the ideas and points of view expressed in the discussion that took place among the dozens of leaders assembled for the event from the public, private, non-profit, and academic sectors. While the conference featured a special focus on mortgage credit, other forms of consumer credit were also evaluated and discussed, including credit card lending and payday lending.

The book, Moving Forward, features selected papers from the symposium.

Many of the papers are also available on our website:

• Unfairness in Life and Lending: Credit and Low-Income Americans (Tamara Draut and Jose Garcia)
• How Should We Serve the Short-Term Credit Needs of Low-Income Consumers? (Melissa Koide and Rachel Schneider)
• A Changing Credit Environment and Its Impact on Low-Income (Peter Zorn and Marsha Courchane) 
• The Future of the Capital Markets: Connecting Primary Consumer and Mortgage Credit Markets to Global Capital (Susan E. Woodward)
• Alternative Forms of Mortgage Finance: What Can We Learn From Other Countries? (Michael Lea)
• Barriers to Federal Home Mortgage Modification Efforts During the Financial Crisis (Patricia McCoy)
• The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act at Thirty-Five: Past History, Current Issues (Allen Fishbein and Ren Essene)
• Loan-Level Disclosure in Securitization Transactions: A Problem with Three Dimensions (Howell Jackson) 
• Give Credit Where Credit Is Due: An Approach to Revamping CRA (Mark Willis)
• Rebuilding the Housing Finance System After the Boom and Bust in Nonprime Mortgage Lending (Eric Belsky and Nela Richardson)
• A Legal/Economic Analytic Framework for the Regulation of Consumer Credit Transactions (Duncan Kennedy) 
• The Regulation of Consumer Financial Products: An Introductory Essay with a Case Study on Payday Lending (Cambpell, Jackson, Madrian, Tufano)
• The Regulatory Structure and Consumer Credit Protections (Travis Plunkett)
• Making Debtor Remedies More Effective (Melissa Jacoby)
• The Need for Government Intervention to Protect and Advance the Public Interest in Consumer and Mortgage Credit Markets (Eric Belsky and Susan Wachter)