Libertarian ping! To be added or removed freepmail me or post a message here.
Posted on 07/17/2008 5:20:52 AM PDT by foutsc
People smarter than me are saying it so it must be true: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are socialist institutions nursing at the teat of government. They are privately owned companies backed by our tax dollars, which encourages the "capitalists" running them to take imprudent risks. Here's an excerpt by Terence Corcoran's article in Canada's National Post.
...turns out not to be rampant capitalism but out of control back-door socialism.So what do we do about them now? Kill them! (Freddie and Fannie, that is.) That's what Holman Jenkins suggest in his WSJ article.There is nothing free market about the two American mortgage backers, hybrid institutions created by the U.S. government to support mortgages and make home buying easier and more affordable for Americans. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, prodded by Congress and regulators, socialized trillions of dollars of mortgage risk on the backs of U. S. taxpayers. Along with dozens of other U. S. government programs that lured American's into a home-buying frenzy, the two institutions -- now getting even more socialist backing from Washington -- stand among the leading creators of the U. S. mortgage and credit crisis.
The obvious solution is to nationalize Fannie and Freddie and break them up. Sell off their regional underwriting offices to private investors. Don't heed any guff about how Fannie and Freddie are "vital to the functioning of the U.S. housing market." Houses would still need to be financed, and the private sector would jump at a chance to get the solid, triple-A business that Fannie and Freddie now monopolize. Indeed, there's evidence that their implicit subsidy never flowed through to homebuyers anyway, but was captured by their shareholders and managers.So how did these crony capitalists, these socialist welfare queen moochers disguised as free marketeers get by with it? They were in bed with federal government officials who love taking your money and giving it away to others, or in this case, using it to back shaky home loans to people who were not financially ready for home ownership. Politico breaks it down for us here.
If you want to know how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have survived scandal and crisis, consider this: Over the past decade, they have spent nearly $200 million on lobbying and campaign contributions.
They’ve stacked their payrolls with top Washington power brokers of all political stripes, including Repubican John McCain’s presidential campaign manager, Rick Davis; Democrat Barack Obama’s original vice presidential vetter, Jim Johnson; and scores of others now working for the two rivals for the White House. (foutsc note: McCain's man lobbied for the institutions, but Obama's man was a little higher up the food chain: He was the CEO of Fannie Mae, leaving in 1998 with a golden parachute.)There you have it: State sponsored socialism, all in the name of doing good and helping people...Fannie and Freddie’s aggressive political maneuvering has helped stave off increased regulation and preserve special benefits such as exemption from state and local income taxes and the ability to borrow at low rates.
The crony capitalists and Wall Street banksters seem to be well served by our government. How about you?
bttt!
Government sponsored socialism is.... National Socialism (aka, Fascism).
We need to STOP it in ALL its forms in this country. It is destroying us.
Ping.
aka democRAT - ism.
Agreed. But we haven't been a "capitalist market" system for a long time now. The government almost lost control of things with the advent of heavy Internet commerce, but they've figured out new ways to screw us since then.
When the communist Chinese are posting GPA growth 2 to 3 times stronger than our economy? There is something VERY wrong going on.
“And frankly, I fail to see any reason why my money should be used to bail either of your greedy a$$e$ out of the fire. “
perhaps because we have eager enemies looking for weakness. If our economy fails you had better buy a rug and practice bowing to mecca.
why my money should be used to bail either of your greedy a$$e$ out of the fire.
Convincing those in Congress who are fleecing you of yours, are going to be the difficult ones to convince.
That's really not the problem...I could never hope to dissuade Congress from their course. What needs to be done is convince enough voters that Congress is doing the wrong thing. Only then will you see change.
IT must be noted - be Govt chartered, they necessarily take on the politically motivated goals of the Govt. The recent crisis it can be argued, was wholly caused by Freddie and Fannies goal, with cooperation by private sector due to tacit Gov’t approval to lend to “diverse” communities. That simply means - making loans to people who probably can’t pay them back. Who exactly did no-income verification loans go to? Illegal immigrants, or at best, Americans who had no hope of paying the money back.
Agreed, but it can’t possibly make sense to throw good money after bad. If the gov’t always is there to step in with a safety net, the lessons of risk are not learned. This is true for everything from the S&L bailout of years ago, to the Katrina property owners who thought they could own property 8’ below sea level and not insure it, to Enron, to the current banking mess. I have absolutely no empathy for stupid people engaging in risky transactions and even less compassion for them when the risks “come home to roost”. You gambled...you lost...not my problem. And for the gov’t to jump in and blunt that message is a huge mistake it makes over and over and over as long as us taxpayers don’t bitch about it.
Libertarian ping! To be added or removed freepmail me or post a message here.
fanny mae and freddy mac were created by fdr in 1938
and semi-privatized.
what’s that tell you?
Yes...and that's not exaggerating. What we see is exactly Fascism...
"...the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise... Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social." --Gaetano Salvemini
It tells me FDR was politically aligned with Fascism.
Given his friends, appointees, and policies, I say he was more aligned with Communism...
yes.
i just finished jonah goldberg’s “liberal fascism”,
which i highly recommend,
and hitler, mussolini and fdr all admired each other.
the term “liberal fascism” was not negative then, as now.
Dittos except for "mistake".
Too late. Every city and even small towns now have so-called economic development plans and committees, which are nothing more than Soviet 5 year plans with a pro-business facade.
Your tax dollars being used to finance the fantasies of busybodies and bureaucrats.
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