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I have a few questions about the subprime mortgage crisis I am hoping you can help me understand the answers to. Following Jackson, _Crabgrass Frontier_, I understand one of the major consequences of the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to be the standardization of the 30 year mortgage in the United States (see esp. p. 196 and 204). My questions are about how so many U.S. homeowners and banks opted out of this path over time, and used other forms of mortgages instead. How widespread have such non-standard mortgages been, and why did they appear to become more widely used in the first decade of the twenty-first century? In short, why didn't this legacy of HOLC and FHA play out in the present? I think I have a fairly good handle on why the subprime loans became a popular instrument for banks that wanted to resell them (relying here on the marvelous reporting done by the National Public Radio show, _This American Life_, "The Giant Pool of Money," at http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=355). In addition to any comments that you can offer me here, I'd be interested in references to readings that help explain this. Contextual note: The reason I'm asking this is that I'm giving a lecture on housing for a class I'm coordinating here at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee onthe Great Depression, with special attention to legacies and connections to the current Great Recession. With thanks, Amanda -- Amanda I. Seligman Director, Urban Studies Programs Associate Professor of History University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee H-Urban: http://www.h-net.org/~urban/ (including logs & posting guidelines) Posting Address: h-urban@h-net.msu.edu / mailto:h-urban@h-net.msu.edu (Click)
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