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EDUCATION: B.S., economics, Loras College, Dubuque, Iowa, 1964; MBA, Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.; Ph.D., business economics and public policy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Mark Riedy's career has taken him and his family from one coast to another and back again (and again).

Riedy settled 17 years ago in San Diego, where he is executive director of the Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate at the University of San Diego and the private university's Ernest W. Hahn Professor of Real Estate Finance.

Riedy grew up and went to school in the Midwest but spent his career in real estate finance, moving his family between the Washington, D.C., area and California.

After completing his dissertation and a two-year teaching stint, Riedy served as a member of President Richard Nixon's Council of Economic Advisors before moving on to special assistant to the chairman of Federal Home Loan Bank in Washington, D.C.

Riedy's subsequent positions were no less prestigious. Over the years, in various executive roles, Riedy worked for PMI, the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, the Mortgage Bankers Association of America, Fannie Mae and the National Council of Community Bankers in Washington, D.C., and J.E. Robert Companies in McLean, Va.

In 1992, Riedy and his wife decided to change scenery and moved to San Diego. He started teaching at USD in September 1993.

How and why did you get into real estate?
My doctoral dissertation was on the savings and loan industry's ability to withstand tight monetary policy and that was housing finance. Then I was at the Federal Home Loan Bank and PMI and the Mortgage Bankers Association. Even back at the Ph.D. level at Michigan when Paul McCracken invited me in at day one to help him, I became intrigued by housing finance and that's the fork in the road I never turned away from. What's changed here in San Diego is that it's such a commercial real estate town. I enjoy being parts of boards of directors. It's expanded my horizons in terms of the job here and getting to know the commercial real estate industry.

 How do you think the market and the economy ended up in the state of distress that it's in today?
Between the investors in mortgage-backed securities on through to the rating agencies, the mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and back to the regulators, all those steps had systemic failures. Part of it was caused by the fact that there was too much money available being force-fed into the mortgage market. It let too many people get into the mortgage market who shouldn't have been in there anyhow.

While people knew the risk involved, they didn't price the risk appropriately. It was improper pricing of risk and this force-feeding of capital. I was at lunch with two mortgage CEOs who both agreed that these loans would be trouble. However, if they didn't put out these loans at prices that people could afford, then people would go down the road to another lender. Either they get the poison today or they get the poison later.

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