<p>My research addresses the cultural and political facets of markets. I am interested in what it means to think of markets as social orders, and in exploring how markets shape people's sense of what is moral, desirable, and even possible in their lives.I am currently at work on a book manuscript that examines some of the commonly overlooked political roots of the current securitization market. Drawing from archival research, I analyze a key moment in the 1960s when the Johnson Administration spun-off Fannie Mae and decided to promote the market for mortgage-backed securities. I use this case to address a set of related questions about the relationship between markets and governments in the United States: why officials get involved in markets in certain ways and not others; why credit programs are a centrally important tool of statecraft in the U.S.; why government involvement in markets is so often overlooked; how seemingly-obscure accounting changes in the federal budget can have lasting and dramatic ramifications for economic and social policy.</p>