[marsh2]

Explain something to me - Wayne Hage used to say that the federal government took ownership of the public lands and eliminated split estate interests to perfect collateral for our {inter]national debt. In this deal, it would seem that the US would end up owning some paper on our private mortgages. Will this be a sort of collateral ballast to offset our growing huge national debt?

[Candor7]

I guess it depends on what kind of mortgage you have.I would say that the federal government will own paper on roughly 30% of all residential mortgages in the US, if this bail out succeeeds in its present form.That should make the job of the IRS much easier in going about its business, as well as other governmental seizure processes. Financial privacy will become a thing of the past for many Americans.

If I had a mortgage ( Which I do not, we paid ours off a year ago) that was packaged to the Fannies, I would be refininacing for a strictly in house mortgage with a bank that has most of its assets outside the USA, like Barclay's or say one of the clean US three ( Wells Fargo etc.), even if it meant a higher interest rate, 30 year fixed.

I would be on that like a dog on the bone.

People need to get as far away from these socialists as possible. I still invest in US stocks, but through an off shore investment bank. Like many Americans now, I have no money in US banks, nor any money in country where the US dollar can quickly be converted to a more stable currency. I had my "bank run" a year ago. Of course I still pay US taxes and always will, but the socialists will never have anything to say about my money and how it is invested, either directly or indirectly through any market manipulation, including this bail out.

Anyone can do that. It just takes a little work.

There are three US banks that are clean. Wells Fargo is one. I forget who the two others are. I had no way of knowing that a year ago, or I would have went with them.