DataPoints

Employment gains blew past the most optimistic forecasts. Has the recovery turned the corner? Mark Zandi parses the numbers on CNBC and MSNBC.

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The two failed housing finance agencies made plenty of blunders, but they aren't to blame for the housing bubble, Mark Zandi writes in today's Washington Post:

The biggest culprits in the housing fiasco came from the private sector, and more specifically from a mortgage industry that was out of control. These included lenders who originated home loans, investment bankers who packaged them into securities, rating agencies that misjudged these securities, and global investors who bought them without much, if any, study.

In other words, America’s mortgage securitization machine was fundamentally broken. It created millions of mortgage loans that, even under reasonable economic assumptions, stood little chance of being repaid — and were not. As a result, hundreds of billions of dollars were lost as defaults and write-downs brought the financial system, and the wider economy, to the brink, requiring a massive government bailout...

Getting history right for this dark economic period is critical if we are to design a better mortgage finance system for the future. If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are responsible for the debacle, then perhaps government’s role in a future mortgage finance system should be minimal. But if private lenders deserve most of the blame, the case grows for giving government an important role in backstopping and overseeing the system.

Read the whole thing.

December's data showed employment slowly increasing, while the jobless rate ticked down. A solid trend? Mark Zandi and the CNBC crew discuss.

The economy's woes hang over yet another new year. What are the chances for real improvement? Mark Zandi looks at the data on CBS' Early Show.

Washington's inability to extend current payroll tax rates and jobless benefits could knock the U.S. economy off track in 2012, Mark Zandi tells Bloomberg News.