The premise that Freddie/Fannie caused the current economic crisis is laughable and Fox News pushing the idea makes them laughable as a "credible" news source.
The truth is, Wall Street built a huge ponzi scheme on credit default swaps. Most estimates put it at 50-75 TRILLION dollars of investment, or several times the value of all the stocks traded on the NYSE! It was all a sham and it was going to come tumbling down eventually with or without government sponsored mortgages.
It wasn't a big secret that Freddie/Fannie was run poorly. Even GW knew that, chalk one up for him. Let's ignore for a moment that it was his party in control of it along with the rest of the federal government at the time. More importantly, with "only" a few trillion dollors of mortgages, a few hundred billion of which maybe went bad in the downturn, it was not the reason we have a global financial crisis. If it were, the government could have easily bought up those bad mortgages free and clear with only a few hundred billion. Why did they need to give the banks 750 billion on top of the hundreds of billions already given out? Why wasn't THAT enough to solve the problem?
There are some in this country who will always lay the blame for every problem on poor working people. God damn them for trying to own a home! Or have a living wage! Or healthcare for their kids! Pretty fucked up, but that's just my opinion.
Re: interesting news
Member #: 4750
Registered: 1996-2001
Posted:
529
Name:
Keith
Occupation:
Retired
Location:
NY
Personal:
late 70s
Experience:
~52 years
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