 |
Home About Tom Courses Publications & Presentations Contact Tom |  |
About Tom
Thomas H. Stanton is an attorney with a strong public administration background. He produces analyses and recommendations for numerous federal offices, agencies, and other organizations.
Tom studies both the design of organizations and interorganizational relationships, with a specialty in financial analysis and knowledge of how financial forces affect individual financial institutions as well as the larger financial system.
The key to Tom's approach is the insight that the perspective of public administration - too often neglected in both academe and practice - can be quite valuable in addressing fundamental issues of government and private markets.
Tom's career bridges the practical and academic. His work for government and other organizations has led to the creation of new offices and approaches to delivering public services more effectively.
He is a Fellow of the Center for the Study of American Government at Johns Hopkins University. Tom is also a member of the board of directors of the National Academy of Public Administration and a former member of the federal Senior Executive Service. His publications include two books on government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) and two edited books on federal organization and management.
He is a member of the board of directors of the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), and is past chair of the NAPA Standing Panel on Executive Organization and Management. He also served as a member of the federal Senior Executive Service for almost five years.
Tom's practical work informs academic writings while his academic insights help inform his advisory work with federal agencies and other clients to improve the workings of government. In addition, his legal background (J.D. degree, Harvard) helps to clarify the framework that shapes organizations and programs, while his graduate training (M.A, Yale University) helps Tom place the details into a larger context. Tom has also conducted research in several different countries.
About GSEs: The Failure of Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac
In September 2008, the two largest government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - failed and went into government hands. As Tom explains in his book, A State of Risk: Will Government-Sponsored Enterprises be the Next Financial Crisis? (HarperBusiness, 1991), this was foreseeable and avoidable.
The concerns expressed in A State of Risk, coupled with Tom's intensive lobbying and his publication of analytical studies showing the most appropriate regulatory framework to promote accountability of the GSEs, helped lead to the creation of a new regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 1992.
Given determined opposition from the two companies, the regulatory reform was only partially successful; under stress from the troubled financial markets, the GSEs have now failed because of structural vulnerabilities analyzed in A State of Risk.
In the intervening years, Tom has followed the financial markets closely, publishing in the academic literature and financial press; speaking at conferences and with policymakers; and analyzing the legislative language of bills intended to reform the regulatory structure of financial institutions.
One of Tom’s recommendations for the GSEs - to create a system of what is now known as “contingent capital” (which requires financial institutions to issue subordinated debt that automatically converts to equity if the institution begins to fail) was first presented in A State of Risk in 1991. Policymakers are now considering extending that idea to other financial institutions as part of a pattern of reforms to try to mitigate systemic risk.
Improving Design of Programs & Organizations that Provide Public Services
As a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), Tom has participated in and led numerous panel studies of government corporations; organizations that seek to become government corporations; and a large number of other organizations, either government or privately owned, that help deliver public services.
Tom has helped design and implement new programs, including leading the contract strategic planning team that worked with officials of the Small Business Administration (SBA) to design a successful program that resulted in sale of more than
$5 billion of nonperforming SBA loans.
He has produced analyses and recommendations for numerous federal offices and agencies, including:
- The General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office)
- Congressional Budget Office
- Office of Management and Budget
- Farm Credit Administration
- Department of Education
- Department of Housing and Urban Development
- Small Business Administration
- Financial Management Service of the Treasury Department
One particularly complex project, done as an NAPA fellow, involved the Bonneville Power Administration and its effort to encourage an effective governance structure for stakeholders to manage crucial issues of price, access, and decision making relating to transmission of electric power in the Pacific Northwest.
Over the years, many congressional committees and subcommittees have invited Tom to testify, and on October 12, 2001, Tom testified at the request of the Senate Government Affairs Committee on legislative proposals to create an office or department of homeland security.
Writings
Tom's writings fall within the realm of public administration. They have appeared in publications including:
- Public Administration Review
- The Administrative Law Journal
- American Banker
- The Wall Street Journal
Tom edited, with Benjamin Ginsberg, Making Government Manageable: Executive Organization and Management in the 21st Century (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), and also edited, Meeting the Challenge of 9/11: Blueprints for Effective Government (M.E. Sharpe Publishers, 2006).
He has also published a second book on GSEs: Government Sponsored Enterprises: Mercantilist Companies in the Modern World, AEI Press, 2002.
Teaching
Tom is a Fellow of the Center for the Study of American Government at the Johns Hopkins University, where he teaches several courses, including the program’s core course for the MBA/MA in government as well as graduate seminars on government and the credit markets; the law of public institutions; and administering homeland security. Tom received the Center's award for Excellence in Teaching.
Education & Awards
Tom graduated college with a triple major in chemistry, political science and German (University of California at Davis; high honors, Phi Beta Kappa) and also has an M.A. from Yale University in international relations and a J.D. from the Harvard Law School. He studied at the University of Göttingen his junior year and is fluent in German.
Some years ago, the National Association of Counties awarded Tom its Distinguished Service Award for his advocacy on behalf of the intergovernmental partnership. In 2009 Tom received the Jesse Birkhead Award for publishing the best article in the journal Public Budgeting and Finance.