Charts of the Week, Mark II: A Quick Look at the Federal Budget, Past, Present and Future

by Stephen Malpezzi, Professor and Lorin and Marjorie Tiefenthaler Distinguished Chair in Real Estate

Yesterday we started a new feature, "Chart of the Week," with a bellwether chart on housing starts over six decades.

Last night, while watching President Obama, Speaker Boehner, and many others opine on our fiscal situation and the debt ceiling, I was moved to re-consult two charts I've used in class recently.



The first chart shows history: it looks at actual outlays and receipts as a share of GDP, annually, from 1950 to 2010. From this we see we have the largest deficit since WWII, because we've managed to combine the highest spending since WWII (Medicare, Medicaid, two wars, "stimulus,"... with: the lowest revenues, as a share of GDP (thanks to the deepest recession, large tax cuts, and a complex set of tax expenditures that beggar belief).




The second chart is a forecast: it shows CBO projections of what would happen to major elements of the budget if past trends in health costs meet the aging boomers. Like all forecasts, in fact more than most, this is a "what-if;" personally I don't think we'll ever see such an untrammeled increase in national income devoted to Medicare/Medicaid in 40 years, but it does tell us we have work to do to fix it. Note also the scary rise in interest paid is despite very conservative assumptions about interest rates, assumptions that may be blown out of the water very shortly.

Presumably our political leaders on both side of the aisles know about these charts. But you wouldn't know if from their recent statements and (lack of) actions.

Our blog presents a range of viewpoints, and you should know that our faculty have a range of views on exactly how to close these gaps. These are not simple questions.

But there is no disagreement on the basic facts in these two charts.

There are lots of ideas out there about how to tackle the deficit issue. My personal views run more along the lines of the Rivlin-Dominici and Bowles-Simpson plans, because Chart 1 reinforces my own view that both revenue increases and spending cuts will be required within a few years to fix this.

What revenue increases, what spending cuts? There is no shortage of ideas and info out there; I have learned from the Brookings Institution as well as our friend Menzie Chinn's (and James Hamilton's) Econobrowser, one of the best macro blogs.

In fact, this morning I noticed that Menzie has a recent entry presenting a version of our first figure (quarterly, with a slightly shorter time span).

Don't like the plans out there? Build your own! The Congressional Budget Office offers "Reducing the Federal Deficit: Spending and Revenue Options" with details, including good estimates of savings, of over 100 options. Last year I assigned my undergrad class the task of building their own plan from this source; feel free to turn your own plan in to me for grading!

Until recently, I thought we had some time to rein the deficit in, though we faced a version of Zeno's paradox: we have to start sometime. The urgency of this posting was originally because of the looming impact of the Federal debt ceiling. This could have extraordinarily serious effects on the economy and on real estate markets. Bertrand Renaud, my good friend and former World Bank colleague, recently pointed me towards "Mortgage Professor" Jack Guttentag's take on this.

But recent reports from the ratings agencies suggest I was too sanguine about the timing of a credible deficit reduction plan, and that a downgrade could come soon; see

Debt Drama Blocks Out Big Picture on Credit, NYT DealBook, 7/25/11

or

Downgrade Threat Looms, WSJ, 7/26/11 (subs required)

Frankly, I'm worried. Bond markets (and stock and real estate markets) could be facing big hits very fast from a default on U.S. debt, "technical" or not, and a rating agency downgrade would be serious stuff even in the absence of default. You've probably heard the current saying, "If you liked September 2008, you'll LOVE August 2011."

Let's shortcut that prediction. We need to put the heat on Congress and the Administration to get a deal done to preserve the U.S.'s credit standing. Now.

Chart(s) of the Week

by Stephen Malpezzi, Professor and Lorin and Marjorie Tiefenthaler Distinguished Chair in Real Estate

"Knowledge that is not quantifiable is of a meager and uninteresting kind."
Lord Kelvin

"Any figure that looks interesting is probably wrong."
Sir Claus Mosley, Presidential Address to the Royal Statistical Society

Today we start a new feature, the Chart (or charts!) of the Week.

My students and colleagues can confirm that I'm a numbers freak. I also like to provide students and colleagues with my constructive -- some might say annoying -- suggestions for improving their data presentation.

Recently I've been spending some time working on a new edition of A Primer on U.S. Housing Markets and Housing Policy, coauthored with my friend Richard Green (also impresario of Richard's Urban Blog). For the second edition, we're pleased that Paul Carrillo joins us as the third coauthor.

What better place to start than updating the iconic chart of U.S. housing starts back to 1890! To quote my fellow chart-freak H. Ross Perot, "I find this fascinatin'."



Imagine jumping into the TARDIS and returning to look at these data in, say, 1960. Analysts of the time could have quite reasonably thought of the postwar boom up to a level approximating 1-2 million starts per year as a temporary phenomenon, while the country caught up to the backlog from the 30s and 40s. It would have been a farsighted thinker indeed who would have foreseen how broad postwar increases in income, changes in building technology (think Levittowns and other innovations in development and construction) as well as the expansion of the availability of housing finance, along with the baby boom and other demographics would have lead to the higher, if very volatile, levels of housing starts for another five decades.

Let's dig a little deeper. Chart 1 has three lines: the red line shows private housing starts; the green line shows public housing starts; and the blue line shows manufactured housing placements. All three are in thousands of units started (or placed). We'll focus mostly on private starts at first.

Around the turn of the century -- pardon me, I'm an old person, around the turn of two centuries ago, 1900 -- housing starts were bumping along at around 300,000 units per year; around 1905 they bumped up to around 500K per year. Students of The Panic of 1907 will be interested to find that this financial crisis had minimal impact on housing starts, maybe partly because at the time few households took out mortgages, and those were usually for perhaps a third of the purchase price. Housing starts did start to fall a few years before the U.S. entered WWI; and the 1918 trough in starts, 118K, remains the record low for the 120 years of data we examine.

Post WWI, starts boomed, hitting a quite substantial peak of 937K in 1925. They started to slide well in advance of the stock market crash of 1929, and fell further during the early years of the Great Depression, bottoming at 134K in 1932. Slowly they climbed back during the rest of the 1930s. GDP and unemployment data from that period are subject to larger-than-usual errors, but taking data in hand at face value, after declining by perhaps 30 percent between 1930 and 1933, with a concomitant rise in unemployment to perhaps 36 percent (!), overall GDP clawed back half that loss from 1934 to 1937, while unemployment fell to maybe 20 percent. The economy then took a second hit in the double dip of 1938, with a 4 percent decline in GDP and a return to rising unemployment. Things began to get better the following year, but with continued weakness in employment (Sound familiar? Well, it was, but much worse!)

During the war years, 1941 to 1945, GDP rocketed up by perhaps 70 percent, and unemployment fell to under 2 percent, while housing starts plummeted, as the nation shifted production from housing and consumption goods into military necessities as the U.S. economy became, in President Roosevelt's words, "the arsenal of democracy." Starts hit a trough of 142K in 1944. Then bounced back a bit in 1945 (the war ended in August), and shot up to an unprecedented 2.3 million in 1950.

After that boom, we settled down, but to a much higher plateau of around 1.5M units per year in the 50s and 60s, with substantial swings: peak-to-trough, housing starts varied by a factor of 2 to 1 or sometimes a little more! Housing, as our friend Richard Green has documented more carefully, became the leading edge of many business cycles. (Follow the Leader: How Changes in Residential and Non‐residential Investment Predict Changes in GDP, Real Estate Economics, 1997). Private starts hit their all-time high in 1972, with 2.4 million units underway.

U.S. housing starts took a big hit during the post-S&L boom recession at the start of the 90s; starts hit a low point of about a million in 1991. They then started a long, fairly steady climb back to a peak of 2.1M in 2005. They started to fall in advance of the 2007 Great Recession, plummeting to below 600K in 2009 and 2010. Ouch! These are the lowest levels of housing starts since 1945.

What about public housing starts? These have always been a small part of the market, albeit one that is an important concern of HUD, taxpayers, and of course the families that live in those units. Public housing starts rose during the later years of the Great Depression, maxing out at 87K in 1941. Along with other housing starts, they collapsed during WWII, bouncing back to 71K in 1951, bumping around at 50K or less for most of the 60s and some of the 70s. They declined to nearly nothing in the 70s as the U.S. shifted from "supply side" subsidies to "demand side" housing subsidies, with the creation of Section 8 Certificates, the precursor to today's housing vouchers. You can read more about those policy shifts in the Primer. We haven't built any public housing to speak of in over three decades, but of course we still have a stock that requires management. All in, public housing itself peaked at under 2 million units three decades ago, and now stands at about a million units, or roughly 1 percent of the U.S. housing stock.

Manufactured housing as an industry came into its own in the 60s, peaking at 576,000 placements in 1972 (the same year as the peak year in housing starts; all in, about 3 million units started). For much of the next two decades placements bumped along near 200K, not at all negligible; they hit their second peak of 354K in 1998, then slid; the slide accelerated with the collapse of the housing market in the Great Recession, to a low of around 50K in 2010.

Quite a story, and still not all there is to say about housing starts. In future posts we'll examine monthly data, talk about seasonal adjustment, and relate starts to some basic demographics and other determinants. But for now, contemplate 120 years of housing starts.

What will the next decade, and century, bring?

A few observations on the evolution of our Program and School

by Stephen Malpezzi, Professor and Lorin and Marjorie Tiefenthaler Distinguished Chair in Real Estate

We've had two significant changes in the staffing and organization of the Wisconsin School of Business and our real estate program in the past few weeks. On July 1, Associate Professor Morris Davis took the reins as Academic Director of the Graaskamp Center, implementing a succession plan that we've had in place for some time. A very short description of the Graaskamp Center's main functions are to provide a home for the MBA program in real estate, and to implement the Wisconsin Idea by connecting our program more deeply to the worlds of business practice and policy outside the University. Morris' movement into this position is a natural evolution after he so successfully took on leadership of the MBA program last year; now he adds the outreach functions to his portfolio. With the support of the faculty, Center staff, Executive Director Michael Brennan, and the rest of the UW real estate community, Professor Davis is well placed to move the Center to the next stage of its evolution. Morris' deep and probing approach to the study of real estate, and his enthusiasm and out-of-the-box thinking, augur well for our future.

Our second change is even more significant, as on September 1 our esteemed Department Chair François Ortalo-Magné becomes the Albert O. Nicholas Dean of the Wisconsin School of Business, succeeding our program's good friend Mike Knetter. During his tenure as Department Chair, François has worked tirelessly and effectively to move our program and the School ahead, in ways large and small. Most of you know at least the outlines of the Global Real Estate Masters (GREM), our innovative partnership with HEC, INCAE and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology to offer dual degrees to students from those top schools, in the process exposing our MBAs and undergraduates to repeated cohorts of future fellow global leaders in real estate. Perhaps fewer people outside Madison know about many of the other innovations François has pioneered in the "blocking and tackling" of the program, e.g. our marketing, financial stewardship, and curriculum. François has shown repeatedly that he is one of those rare leaders who excel at both the development of innovative strategies and their careful execution.
Right now, the highest priority for our real estate program has to be moving ahead in concert with the Wisconsin School of Business, and I am completely confident François is the right person to build on the contributions of Mike Knetter, (interim dean) Joan Schmit and other leaders of our School.

Naturally, we will have some other changes to announce in the weeks and months ahead as we adjust the roles of faculty and staff in response to these exciting developments. For now, let me simply congratulate Morris and François on their new roles, and convey my own enthusiasm about the possibilities these changes open up for the Graaskamp Center, the entire Wisconsin Real Estate Program, and the Wisconsin School of Business. I have had, and continue to enjoy, the privilege of working with Morris and François and our other faculty and staff, and so many of you who embody those attributes and values that make the Wisconsin Tradition what it is today: intellectual rigor, an ethical approach to our business, great enthusiasm for our students, "continual and fearless sifting and winnowing." I know you will join me in supporting Morris and François in their new roles. On Wisconsin!

Congratulations Dean Ortalo-Magné

Please join us in welcoming Wisconsin Real Estate's own François Ortalo-Magné as the new dean of the Wisconsin School of Business. The announcement came on Friday July 8. Ortalo-Magné, Robert E. Wangard Professor and chair of the Real Estate and Urban Land Economics Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will begin his new role as the Albert O. Nicholas Dean of the Wisconsin School of Business on September 1. Visit the school's website for the full announcement and more information. Here are a few quotes from the official announcement:

“I am convinced the Wisconsin School of Business is capable of greatness. And we do not have a choice,” says Ortalo-Magné. “We must respond to the globalization of higher education and the revolution in information technologies. I am excited about the opportunity to lead our school, building on our values and the strength of our specializations, renewing and reinventing how we partner with the world and colleagues around campus.”

“François has the intellectual energy and ambition to help the School of Business reach new levels,” says UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin. “I am impressed by his work on the international front and am confident that he will consolidate and enhance the gains made under Mike Knetter’s leadership."

The Financial Times carried news of the announcement on Monday, "Wisconsin-Madison appoints Ortalo-Magné as next dean."

And the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a profile, "UW-Madison names new business school dean," including comments from Bill Malkasian, president of the Wisconsin Realtors Association.

"He sees no boundaries. He certainly understands the world. ...He brings a global perspective."

Congratulations to François and on Wisconsin!

UPDATED 7.15.11

BusinessWeek reported today "Wisconsin Gets a New B-School Dean." Read the article here.

UW's Daily Cardinal also writes ("Ortalo-Magné named B-School dean") that Ortalo-Magné:

intends to strengthen leadership within the business school, continue to learn about how the school functions, and build relationships with other business school deans.

Ortalo-Magné said it is imperative for the business school to respond to worldwide changes in information technologies and higher education, and he looks forward to helping it do so.

Photo: Valerie Caviness

"Sifting and winnowing" at the Wisconsin Real Estate & Economic Outlook Conference

On Thursday, June 9, the Graaskamp Center held our annual service conference for the state, the Wisconsin Real Estate and Economic Outlook Conference. Academic Director Stephen Malpezzi delivered the following opening remarks:

I'm very proud to be associated with this conference. I want to thank all the speakers and presenters, and especially all of you in the audience, for making this conference a success.

The Wisconsin Idea tells us that the University needs to be connected to real problems and issues faced by Wisconsinites as well as those beyond our physical borders, in the rest of the nation and indeed around the globe. It is our basic job description. As I look over the agenda I think we've put together a meeting that does meet the test of the Wisconsin Idea.

Two years ago we changed the name of our annual conference from the Wisconsin Housing Conference to the Wisconsin Real Estate and Economic Outlook Conference, to recognize the deep connections among housing, other kinds of real estate, and the economy in general.

Over the next few years, as Morris Davis provides the academic leadership for the Graaskamp Center and Mike Brennan leads our connection to the industry, I'll be spending part of my time to strengthen the focus of the Graaskamp Center on economic development.

Details will follow in the months ahead. Today I want to simply bring this effort, and indeed this conference, back to the touchstone of "sifting and winnowing" that is part of our inheritance from our intellectual and institutional forbearers, beginning with Richard Ely. Most of you have heard the phrase, and many of you have seen the plaque atop Bascom Hill, from a century ago:

Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the Great State University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found. Taken from a report of the Board of Regents. 1894 [slide of the plaque projected]

As many of you know, this quotation, famous on campus and off, came out of a fierce debate about (of all things) unionization, in 1894. In brief, Ely supported unionization, and some of the Regents did not. They never, to my knowledge, reached agreement on the specific issue, but they did, in the end, establish a firm principle that at Wisconsin, people had a right to speak on different sides of important issues; a right to be heard; and that we owe those with whom we disagree, as well as those with whom we agree, a duty to listen.

To be clear, "sifting and winnowing," doesn't mean that every idea is equal; but rather that ideas should be heard, and examined on their merits, rigorously, rather than reflexively. As Daniel Moynihan famously put it some years ago, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. Sifting and winnowing helps us establish the facts, and helps us form opinions that are grounded in those facts as well as our values.

Now, in light of the principle of sifting and winnowing, today we aim to have some constructive conversations about housing, real estate, and our state's economic development.

I'm a professor, and I do research on these subjects. But economic development is not simply an abstraction, or merely an academic subject. It touches all of our lives, and our children's lives. Economic development is not just about economics, not just how much stuff we can produce or buy. It's also about how well housed we are, whether we're educated to reach our full potential, how well we attend to our health. It even touches on our basic security, and at the national and global level, questions of war and peace.

The key to understanding economic development is to start by understanding there is no key to economic development. There is no silver bullet. Economic development is complicated.

Unfortunately we live in a world where simple solutions get the headlines. All too often, we talk past each other, cherry picking research and arguments that support our preconceived notions, and ignoring research that challenges our preconceptions. Psychologists call this confirmation bias, and it's a very powerful part of human nature. We're all subject to it. We have to fight it, every day. The best way to fight confirmation bias is to hold to rigorous standards of evidence, and hold your own opinions to the same standard to which you hold others.

For example, if you're a Republican, or a fiscal conservative of whatever persuasion, you might think state tax cuts are a silver bullet. It's important that you know about the substantial body of research that tells us simple tax differences between states explain virtually none of the variation in state economic performance.

To pick another example, if you're a Democrat, or someone who worries about providing enough resources to schools, you might think that more dollars to our schools, perhaps for smaller class sizes, are a silver bullet. It's important that you know that of a number of careful studies done on this issue, so far I've only found one that finds statistically significant relationships between class size and performance, and that only in a few grades. Most careful studies are unable to find a simple relationship.

I can list another dozen silver bullets that aren't really silver. School vouchers, charter schools, passenger rail, spending on roads, less regulation of business, more regulation of business.

It gets even more complicated here. None of these is a silver bullet. None, by itself, are magic beans that take us up the stalk to Economic Development Nirvana. Yet each of these ideas contains some germ of truth, or at least can help us think harder and better about what kinds of things are likely to work, and in what combination. Tax cuts can help if we find ways to preserve essential services while reducing taxes. As a society, we haven't had that conversation yet. Some charter schools, and some public schools, do work as advertised; we need to make sure we figure out why, and replicate and encourage them. As a society, we haven't had that conversation yet. It's not about how much regulation we have so much as what kind of regulation, how we make regulations and taxes and other government interventions smarter. As a society, we haven't had that conversation yet.

Recognizing that some of the best ideas will come from people with whom you disagree, is an important step towards making these true conversations, productive conversations. We need, as Ely and the 1894 Board of Regents taught us, to sift and winnow. Fight your confirmation bias; help me see mine, but in a constructive way. Don't paint yourself, or others, into corners. Determine the facts, and what works, without regard to ideology; and then act on it.

This is why we are here today. Join us in a day of sifting, of winnowing, of learning. Let's move these conversations forward today. Listen, as well as talk. Do recognize that, if we're honest and careful about it, sometimes we'll initially be uncomfortable with what we find. Challenge yourself as well as others. Let's move the conversation ahead, not only today, but over succeeding weeks and months and years. Let's get Wisconsin's economy, and our people, moving FORWARD.

On Wisconsin!

Postscript: Several conference participants and colleagues have asked for more details on Malpezzi's claims that research rarely supports "silver bullet" approaches to economic development. In the next several weeks we'll post some details and references, and seek comments and further conversation.

The Progressive online has begun the conversation, with a commentary on Malpezzi's introductory remarks, and his own brief reply, at Progressive.org.

More "sifting and winnowing" to come!

School of Business dean finalists to visit campus

From the office of University Communications:

The three finalists for the position of Albert O. Nicholas Dean of the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will be on campus in coming days.

Each finalist will spend two days on campus visiting and meeting with people at UW-Madison as the final part of the search-and-screen process.

During their visits, the three finalists will have contact with the broader campus community, from meetings with Chancellor Biddy Martin and Provost Paul DeLuca to gatherings with academic deans, shared governance groups, and students, faculty, staff, alumni and other members of the Wisconsin School of Business community.

The candidates will also hold open sessions in Grainger Hall, 975 University Ave., to answer questions from those interested in the future of the Wisconsin School of Business.

• Monday, June 6: Michael Trick, professor of operations research and associate dean for research in the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, 10:30 a.m.
• Wednesday, June 8: Anil K. Makhija, Dean's Distinguished Professor of Finance in the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University, 2:30 p.m.
• Wednesday, June 15: François Ortalo-Magné, Robert E. Wangard Professor of Real Estate at the Wisconsin School of Business, 10:30 a.m.

Live webcasts of the candidate presentations will be available at http://www.bus.wisc.edu.

This morning was the first of the presentations, with Michael Trick. As part of his presentation, he mentioned two books on the future of graduate level business education. I thought this was a good fit for our Reading for Life series (originated by Prof. Stephen Malpezzi, see previous entries in the series here).

The first is Rethinking the MBA by three Harvard researchers Srikant Datar, David A. Garvin, and Patrick G. Cullen; and the other is From Higher Aims to Hired Hands by Harvard professor Rakesh Khurana.

There certainly is no shortage of books on the subject of higher education. Have you read either of these books? What do you think of them? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Local concerns over housing prices affected by national outlook (video)

UW Real Estate Professor Morris A. Davis was interviewed yesterday for a story on local concerns about trends in housing prices. Here is the video (via Channel 3000):

Register before June 1st

Tomorrow is the registration deadline for the 2011 Wisconsin Real Estate and Economic Outlook Conference.

The theme for 2011 is: New Partnerships: Government and Real Estate
When: Thursday June 9, 2011
Fluno Center for Executive Education, Madison, WI

With an exciting roster of panelists and keynote speakers including Governor Scott Walker, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, and UW Foundation President Michael Knetter plus Patricia McCoy from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a capacity crowd is expected. Reserve your spot now, click here to register.

Panel discussions will address:
The New Regulatory Realities: What Can You Expect?
The Budget and Financial Reforms: What's on the Horizon?
Financial Reforms and Affordable Housing: What Works

For the full agenda, visit the conference website.

ICSC survey shows salaries and hiring rates on the rise

An article in this month's issue of Shopping Centers Today (subs required) had good news from the retail real estate sector.

"Nearly 70 percent of the companies that participated in ICSC's most recent survey of North American retail real estate compensation said they were expecting to raise base salaries, and just over a quarter of participants considered boosting staff levels last year."

ICSC's chief economist and director of research said the results "were encouraging and reassuring for 2011 as well, with expectations of continued wage gains across a broader range of the industry."

A full report on the salary survey is available for purchase for ICSC members.

And check out our ad on Page 201!


The International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) RECon 2011 convention is taking place this week in Las Vegas. The Wisconsin Real Estate Program is participating.

Stop by our table in university row in the Grand Lobby between the North and Central Halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

And join Wisconsin real estate faculty, students, alumni and friends at a networking reception tonight starting at 5:30 in the Bistro Lounge at the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel. For details, visit our Facebook page.

New partnerships at the Wisconsin Real Estate and Economic Outlook Conference

Wisconsin Real Estate and Economic Outlook Conference:
New Partnerships: Government and Real Estate

Thursday June 9, 2011
Fluno Center for Executive Education, Madison, WI
Register today!

In the wake of one of the worst financial crises in recent history, the Federal government has revamped the U.S. regulatory architecture responsible for safeguarding the financial system. Perhaps the most influential, and controversial, of these reforms is the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. Some believe that the new laws and regulations will curtail risk-taking necessary for innovation and growth, while others believe that the new laws change the incentives that encouraged banks and other financial-market participants deemed too-big-to- fail to take excessive and socially undesirable risks.

What we know for sure right now is that it will take some time for businesses to fully assess how they will be affected by the new laws and rules. How will the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection affect how real estate and finance professionals do transactions? How will new rules support buyers and sellers, lenders and borrowers? How will the proposed replacement of Fannie and Freddie affect the cost of and access to mortgage credit, and what might the secondary mortgage market of the future look like?

At the 2011 Wisconsin Real Estate and Economic Outlook Conference, we will explore how the new regulatory landscape will affect the size and scope of activity in the real estate and financial services industries. The conference will include thoughts and analysis from experts from the public and private sectors, from government, business, and academia, all of whom are on the front lines of housing market research, policy, and practice. Join this important conversation about the current state of the national housing market and how financial reform efforts will affect the real estate and financial services industries.

Keynote Speakers

Elizabeth Warren, Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (invited)
Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin (invited)
Michael Knetter, President and Chief Executive Officer of the University of Wisconsin Foundation and former dean of the Wisconsin School of Business

Panel Topics

• New Regulatory Realities: What Can You Expect?
• Budget and Financial Reforms: What's on the Horizon?
• Financial Reforms and Affordable Housing: What Works

Click here for the full agenda and to register.

The conference is brought to you by:
James A. Graaskamp Center for Real Estate
Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority
Wisconsin Department of Commerce
Wisconsin Realtors Association
Wisconsin Bankers Association

Corporate sponsorship opportunities are available. Contact Lee Gottschalk at lgottschalk at bus.wisc.edu for more information on how your company can reach a wide variety of professionals and policy makers and support critical housing and community development issues.