Susan M. Hoffmann is Professor of Political Science at Western Michigan University. She is the author of Politics and Banking: Ideas, Public Policy, and the Creation of Financial Institutions. Mark K. Cassell is Associate Professor of Political Science at Kent State University. He is the author of How Governments Privatize: The Politics of Divestment in the United States and Germany, which won the International Political Science Association's Charles H. Levine Award for the best book in public policy and administration published in 2002.

• List of Figures and TablesPrefaceAcknowledgments1. Growth and Mission Expansion in the Federal Home Loan Banks2. Grounded Research and Competing Paradigms in Political Science3. Housing Finance Mission4. Housing and Community Development Mission5. Supporting the Viability of Community Banks6. Mission Expansion as a Behavioral Process7. Structural Choices Moving Forward: Recommendations for ReformAfterwordFederal Home Loan Banks and the Foreclosure Crisis of 2008NotesWorks CitedIndex