> thank God for Hank and his bankster pals, who undermined
> those dirty Russkie commies' nascent plot by proceeding
> forthwith to bail out Freddie and Feddie themselves
> (with our money, natch)!
I don't know about you, but I think that the explicit guarantee of Freddie and Fannie by the US Government is a step in the right direction. If you'd like to see what's left of investment banks stop playing games with home mortgages -- and I think 90% of the mortgage market consumers would agree that simplicity, transparency and clarity are better than what we had over the previous decade -- then you should support the wholesale control of the mortgage market by the government.
This is essentially the same argument as for Single Payer: in a largely homogenous and ubiquitous market the slicer-dicers are bad for democracy and ultimately bad for consumers. Most US households have a mortgage in the same way that most households should have health care. Standardization and fairness would be a step up, and the government seems like the natural place to put this function.
Fannie and Freddie, in spite of their faults[*], were -- and continue to be -- standouts in the home loan marketplace. They are consistently the only ones to publish -- and stick to -- clear, fair standards for loan quality. It was the move away from those standards and products that set the stage for the bad loans of the last stage of the bubble in 2005-2006.
[*] Due almost wholly, IMHO, to the strategic mistep of having them go public and forcing them to play the quarter-to-quarter earnings game "like the big boys" ... the model should be more like the USPS than Countrywide.
/jordan