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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (146834)	11/11/2008 6:33:28 PM
From: geode00	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

These are your objections to Fannie and Freddie. I understand, although I believe you are completely incorrect, about your ideological objections to the government doing anything that you dislike (libertarian of convenience) but I am trying to get at why it matters in this case whether Fannie and Freddie were GSEs or private companies in their conception. You said you dislike Fannie and Freddie: "Because they distort the market for housing. Politically controlled to follow the government's agenda, and implicitly guaranteed by the feds are the important ones." If you are not blaming Fannie and Freddie for causing this financial mess in its entirety, why do you care on a practical basis about these issues? As I'm saying for (I think) the third or maybe fourth time, private companies are just as enmeshed in this situation as the GSEs. It does not matter that they had a mission to fulfill (all companies do) or that there was an implicit guarantee which all large companies do as well. The Bush administration made many mistakes. They could push for wider homeownership without making a mess of the financial system. They didn't care and they still don't. Bush is still pushing for some trade deal in exchange for helping to fix the economy or, at least, to keep it from spinning into what actually could be depression. The failure of government is LACK of activity in the regulation and oversight of the financial system. When corporations are making fradulent loans, it is up to government to prosecute them. That, not a general desire to increase homeownership, is the government's failure. OK, that is one of the government's failures. "The government distorted the incentives for the private sector" You mean the government took those poor, unsophisticated investment bankers and had them get those poor, unsophisticated PhDs to create incredibly complicated financial instruments in order to gamble on a shaky debt market? Really? When?