^ Except more regulation would probably have made the 2008 financial meltdown either a lot easier or non-existent.
No?
The government (in the guise of Housing and Urban Development aka HUD, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac) is what strong-armed banks into making loans they wouldn't have ordinarily made in the first place. Government has been forcing banks to make bad loans to deadbeats to be "compassionate" and have "more diverse" portfolios. The goal is noble -- for more people to own their own homes. But in the end, we got bad loans to deadbeats and people who can't pay back what they borrowed, or people who buy too much home for what they can really afford, and have adjustable mortgages so when interest rates go up they can no longer afford their mortgage payments, thus we end up with a foreclosure nightmare and bad loans nobody wants to touch.
Which is how we got into this mess.
Then take a look at what out-of-power politicians have been working at, or sitting on the board of, those three government organizations -- some of the very same people crying for more government regulation. It's a fix, a power grab, and the fleecing of the tax payer and I'm shocked people don't see it for what it is.
Also, it sounds like a few posts up that people aren't clear on what "Fannie Mae" and "Freddie Mac" exactlly are. They are government-run corporations, like the Post Office or Amtrak. If any of you had school loans like I did, you had to deal with Sally Mae which is the equivalent. Fanny and Freddie are government run quasi-companies that were set up to guarantee loans to "needy" people at better than market rates who might not be able to get them on the free market. In other words it's a government cash machine.
One of the big scams is that a lot of out of power politicians (such as Jamie Gorelik, one of Clinton's tsars) get cushy multi-million dollar jobs there when they have absolutely not a shred of financial knowledge. It's a place to get a cushy job and pad your nest while your party is out of power. Barney Frank's lover was also on the board, and to add insult to injury Fannie/Freddy make political contributions, the largest beneficiary of which was Sen. Chris Dodd.
Am I the only one who sees something wrong with a government-run company stocked with out of power politicians making political campaign contributions?
