“This is an important point that has to be repeated – as Fannie and Freddie operate today, going forward, there is no loss,” Frank wrote.These statements by Frank came one day before Freddie Mac requested an additional government bailout of $10.6 billion to cover losses incurred in the first quarter.
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It’s no wonder that even after the total collapse of Fannie and Freddie in 2008, at an ultimate cost to tax payers which could exceed $400B, Barney Frank is still adamantly opposed to legislation which would prevent any further federal bailouts of the GSE’s. For Democrats like Frank, continued control over Fannie and Freddie represents the effective nationalization of the entire mortgage industry. It’s a dream come true for those who wish to use the power of the federal government to implement their desired social and redistributive policies.
2 comments:
A few things on Freddie (and, I assume, Fannie):
First off, we made mistakes - no question about it.
Having said that though, we had a lot of help. For instance - our former regulator, HUD, kept upping the percentage of loans we had to buy that would help "disadvantaged" home buyers. Disadvantaged, perhaps, because their credit was poor. However, one does not lightly tell one's regulator to pound salt, so more and more loans of poor quality were made to push a social agenda rather than in adherence to rules of financial soundness.
Also, Congress helped - a lot. By legalizing and opening the pathway to low-doc or no-doc (i.e. "liars") loans, Congress made it increasingly difficult for Freddie and Fannie to require the sort of high-quality documentation that would substantiate one's creditworthiness.
Now that the sludge is flying, the government is again meddling - pushing us to undertake or forebear on loans to people who would otherwise go to foreclosure, and in other ways pushing policies that prevent us from taking steps to return to financial soundness.
Lastly, you will note that Freddie alone had to pay the government 1.3 billion in the last quarter alone as dividends on preferred stock owned by the government. Which did nothing except drive up the amount that we had to request from the Treasury in order to remain solvent. I believe that the phrase is "The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.", or something like it.
It's convenient to point fingers at these agencies and to accuse us of being nothing less than the devil incarnate, but without these two entities you would have seen a national collapse on the part of the mortgage market that absolutely dwarfed anything even remotely imagined in today's meltdown scenario.
If you'll note, I was pointing squarely at Jackass Frank; I could also have pointed at a number of other politicians, AND their buttmonkeys like Franklin Raines(who ought to be in jail for what he and his minions did).
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