Eswar Prasad

On the one hand, Trump talks about wanting houses to be worth more so that those who have houses can feel richer.

At the same time, he wants to increase the affordability of housing, and his solution to that seems to be 50-year mortgages, which are going to mean much greater interest payments.

So I think bringing some rationality to the secondary markets that support mortgages

could be a more effective way of running government policy.

I think an implicit government guarantee of all mortgages probably is not a good idea, but I think the government could certainly play a more constructive role in the secondary market than seems to be happening under the current administration.

So again, it's a problem that besets this country.

There are no easy solutions, but I think we have to nibble away at this problem with a particular focus on the supply side.

I think our education system, including the universities you and I are at, Scott, are really the treasure of this nation, and it is painful to see what this administration has done in terms of the ability of these institutions to generate research that then breeds innovation.

But the access to education is certainly a piece of the set of issues we were talking about as well.

Now, I suspect that your university, just like at mine, the sticker price is not what

majority of students pay.

We do have very generous financial aid programs.

We try to make sure that students who do have the credentials to come to Cornell are supported financially through.

But one might argue that the real problem arises even earlier on.

I said students who have the ability to prosper at Cornell, but

If you think about the educational system more broadly, there are many people, especially from inner-city schools, who are never going to have this opportunity.

Now, the education system by itself cannot solve the ills of society.

You know, I know teachers in some of these inner city schools and the kids that they teach, you know, are essentially coming from broken homes where violence is the norm inside the house, outside the house.

It's hard for those schools to fix those problems.

And if those problems don't get fixed at the school, you get students who cannot really in any sense compete for a position at a top university.