Real Estate Investments: This class will explore the market for real estate investing in the United States. Students will be introduced to the mortgage market, property valuation, ROI analysis and investment strategies for single family, multifamily and commercial assets along with publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). The class will also explore the role of Real Estate in the U.S. economy. We will examine the economic factors leading to the 2002-2007 Real Estate bubble, the 2008 Housing Crisis and the 2009-2012 Foreclosure surplus.

Liquidity and Financial Crisis: This class is focused on discussion, reading and writing more than on analytics, charts or graphs. We will delve into the liquidity squeezes that have wreaked havoc in the national and global economies in recent decades, beginning with a deep dive into the financial crisis of 2008, and leading to the recent Silicon Valley Bank liquidity crisis. Subjects covered in this class include mortgage fundamentals, predatory lending, secondary market basics, reverse-engineering the structure of a securitization, interbank lending, bank runs (not just the retail banks, but investment banks and nonbanks too), and the complicated-sounding but actually simple derivatives, synthetic securities and indices that add velocity and excitement to any burgeoning market meltdown. In the end, we'll try to understand the Fed policies that failed and those that are effective.