Hello,I'm an Associate Professor of Political Science at Kent State University where I teach courses in public policy and administration, comparative public policy, and urban politics. I'm mostly interested in how governments work and how they can work better. Susan Hoffmann and my book about the FHLBank System is an examination of one of the most important public institutions in America that very few people know much about. Specifically, we illustrate how FHLBank System's purpose changes over time and why that occurred. In so doing we build a case for the capacity of government. Moreover a public agency that takes on a purpose beyond it's original its original mission is not always an example of "mission creep" or "bureaucratic excess."I wrote a previous book titled How Governments Privatize: The Politics of Divestment in the United States and Germany (Georgetown University Press, 2003). The book compares the Resolution Trust Corporation with Germany's Treuhandanstalt, the agency charged with taking over, managing and privatizing the industrial assets of the former East Germany. Currently I work on financial regulation issues but I'm also interested in the adoption of open source technologies by government. For fun I'm reading 13 Bankers by Simon Johnson and James Kwak. And I just read Yann Martel's Beatrice and Virgil. Cheers,Mark Cassell