The $700-billion fix
Here we go again. There’s no reason to have faith in the fix, no matter its final form. Career members in Congress created this financial crisis and will surely make a mess of the solution. It’s hardly reassuring that the members of Congress that created this predicament are involved in its solution.
Fannie and Freddie: The Sequel
About my previous missive on the government bailout of private companies, a reader wrote this: “Who authorized the ‘government’ to bail out these companies? (Was it) even debated in Congress? The millions of Americans who have lost their homes or are in danger of losing their homes would surely have a different opinion about what those blank checks should be used for.”
The question isn’t just a fair one. It’s a critical one.
AIG, Fannie, Freddie, free markets and frustration
Get out your checkbooks America.
The U.S. government decided to get into the mortgage-lending business and now holds an 80-percent stake in a major insurance company, and that means you and I must pay.
Fannie May and Freddie Mac, the only “private” lending institutions in the country with every penny of their loans backed by the U.S. government, have seen their default rates climb faster than a cat chasing a canary up a tree.
And their holdings have melted away like the Wicked Witch of the West hit with a bucket of water.
