Mel Watt

Melvin Luther "Mel" Watt (born August 26, 1945) is an American politician who has been Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency since 2014. Previously he served as the United States Representative for North Carolina's 12th congressional district from 1993 to 2014. He is a member of the Democratic Party. An attorney from Charlotte, North Carolina, Watt also served one term as a state Senator and served as campaign manager for Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt.

On May 1, 2013, President Barack Obama nominated Watt as the next head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which among other agencies, administers or has oversight for the FHA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. The U.S. Senate confirmed Watt on December 10, 2013.

Early life, education and career

Watt was born in Steele Creek, located in Mecklenburg County. He is the son of Evelyn Lucille (née Mauney) and Graham Edward Watt. Watt is a graduate of York Road High School in Charlotte. He was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1967 with a B.S. degree in Business Administration. In 1970, he received a J.D. from Yale Law School and was a published member of the Yale Law Journal.

Price index

A price index (plural: “price indices” or “price indexes”) is a normalized average (typically a weighted average) of price relatives for a given class of goods or services in a given region, during a given interval of time. It is a statistic designed to help to compare how these price relatives, taken as a whole, differ between time periods or geographical locations.

Price indexes have several potential uses. For particularly broad indices, the index can be said to measure the economy's general price level or a cost of living. More narrow price indices can help producers with business plans and pricing. Sometimes, they can be useful in helping to guide investment.

Some notable price indices include:

History of early price indices

No clear consensus has emerged on who created the first price index. The earliest reported research in this area came from Welshman Rice Vaughan who examined price level change in his 1675 book A Discourse of Coin and Coinage. Vaughan wanted to separate the inflationary impact of the influx of precious metals brought by Spain from the New World from the effect due to currency debasement. Vaughan compared labor statutes from his own time to similar statutes dating back to Edward III. These statutes set wages for certain tasks and provided a good record of the change in wage levels. Vaughan reasoned that the market for basic labor did not fluctuate much with time and that a basic laborers salary would probably buy the same amount of goods in different time periods, so that a laborer's salary acted as a basket of goods. Vaughan's analysis indicated that price levels in England had risen six to eightfold over the preceding century.

House price index

A House Price Index (HPI) measures the price changes of residential housing. Methodologies commonly used to calculate HPI are the hedonic regression (HR), simple moving average (SMA) and repeat-sales regression (RSR).

United States

FHFA/OFHEO

The US Federal Housing Finance Agency (formerly Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight a.k.a. OFHEO) publishes the HPI inx, a quarterly broad measure of the movement of single-family house prices.

The HPI is a weighted, repeat-sales index, meaning that it measures average price changes in repeat sales or refinancings on the same properties in 363 metropolises. This information is obtained by reviewing repeat mortgage transactions on single-family properties whose mortgages have been purchased or securitized by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac since January 1975.

Since the HPI index only includes houses with mortgages within the conforming amount limits, the index has a natural cap and does not account for jumbo mortgages.

The HPI was developed in conjunction with OFHEO's (now FHFA) responsibilities as a regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It is used to measure the adequacy of their capital against the value of their assets, which are primarily home mortgages.

Federal Housing Finance Agency

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is an independent federal agency created as the successor regulatory agency resulting from the statutory merger of the Federal Housing Finance Board (FHFB), the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development government-sponsored enterprise mission team, absorbing the powers and regulatory authority of both entities, with expanded legal and regulatory authority, including the ability to place government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) into receivership or conservatorship.

In its role as regulator, it regulates Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBanks, or FHLBank System). It is wholly separate from the Federal Housing Administration, which largely provides mortgage insurance.

History

The law establishing the FHFA is the Federal Housing Finance Regulatory Reform Act of 2008, which is Division A of the larger Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, Public Law 110-289, signed on July 30, 2008 by President George W. Bush. One year after the law was signed, the OFHEO and the FHFB went out of existence. All existing regulations, orders and decisions of OFHEO and the Finance Board remain in effect until modified or superseded.

Bob Corker

Robert Phillips "Bob" Corker, Jr. (born August 24, 1952) is an American politician and the junior United States Senator from Tennessee, serving since 2007. Corker, a member of the Republican Party, is currently the chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in the 114th congress.

Born in Orangeburg, South Carolina, Corker is a graduate of the University of Tennessee. In 1978 at the age of 25, Corker founded a successful construction company, which he later sold in 1990. He ran for the 1994 U.S. Senate election in Tennessee, but was defeated by future Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist in the Republican primary. Appointed by Tennessee Governor Don Sundquist, Corker served as Commissioner of Finance and Administration for the State of Tennessee from 1995 to 1996. He later acquired two of the largest real estate companies in Chattanooga, Tennessee, before being elected the 71st Mayor of Chattanooga in 2000; serving one term as Mayor from 2001 to 2005.

Corker announced his candidacy for the 2006 U.S. Senate election in Tennessee after two-term incumbent Bill Frist announced his retirement from the Senate. Corker defeated former Representatives Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary in the Republican primary, with 47% of the vote. He later defeated Democratic Representative Harold Ford, Jr. in the general election, with 51% of the vote. In 2012 Corker was re-elected, defeating Democrat Mark E. Clayton by 65% to 30%.