Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp had soured, a report Kemp denied. Fitts' departure prompted criticism of Kemp; she had been – according to Neal Peirce – "widely regarded as the best manager he brought in". According to Fitts, she was offered an appointment to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors after her departure from HUD but declined, preferring to return to the private sector instead. Hamilton Securities and Solari After leaving government, Fitts founded Hamilton Securities, an employee-owned brokerage house, which she ran until 1998. In 1993, Hamilton Securities won a contract with HUD to manage its $500 billion investment portfolio. While managing HUD's portfolio, Fitts devised a location-based mortgage debt resale software program that may have resulted in an increase in department revenue of several hundreds of millions of dollars. In 1997, HUD canceled the Hamilton contract over what it claimed were accounting errors involving the program; an investigation into Hamilton Securities was launched by the HUD Inspector-General, the FBI, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. According to Fitts, the investigation was undertaken as retribution against her; she claimed that Community Wizard data revealed that some federally-guaranteed mortgage securities may have been fraudulently issued. One outside complainant, a government contractor, charged insider dealing and bid rigging in its contention that Hamilton Securities had obtained its HUD business due to favoritism. In 2002 the investigation was closed, and investigators stated they had found no evidence of wrongdoing by Fitts or Hamilton Securities. Writing and commentary Fitts has researched and commented on government spending. In a 2004 study published in World Affairs: The Journal of International Issues, she purported to find "evidence that a very large proportion of the nation's wealth is being illegally diverted since several decades into secret, unaccountable channels and programmes with unspecified purposes, including covert operations and subversions abroad and clandestine military R&D at home. Public institutions have been infiltrated and taken over by shadowy groups in the service of powerful private and vested interests, often at the expense of the common good." In 2017 Fitts co-authored a report, with Michigan State University economist Mark Skidmore, that claimed to find $21 trillion in "unauthorized spending" by the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development over a 17-year period. Fitts has claimed that HUD's mission of spurring economic growth is secondary to what she contends is its use as a