The Dead Pledge

Today, the federal government underwrites a financial system built around mortgage lending. In The Dead Pledge, Judge Glock reveals the surprising origins of this entanglement in forgotten economic ideas and policies that held sway from the early twentieth century through the Great Depression. The American government today supports a financial system based on mortgage lending, and it often bails out the financial institutions making these mortgages. The Dead Pledge reveals the surprising origins of American mortgages and American bailouts in policies dating back to the early twentieth century.Judge Glock shows that the federal government began subsidizing mortgages in order to help lagging sectors of the economy, such as farming and construction. In order to encourage mortgage lending, the government also extended unprecedented assistance to banks. During the Great Depression, the federal government made new mortgage lending and bank bailouts the centerpiece of its recovery program. B