Freddie, Fannie, and McNasty
Freeman editor Sheldon Richman has a great post at his Free Association blog debunking John McCain's recent claims to have supported reforms that would have kept Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from going south:
He did not support converting those government-sponsored enterprises into organizations without access to government favors or an implicit guarantee of bailout. Rather he merely supported new "independent" government oversight of those privileged corporations.
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The issue hasn't been lack of oversight, but intervention designed to countervail the market process in order to promote home ownership among people who couldn't otherwise have afforded it. Not coincidentally, this brought great profits to the financial, homebuilding, and real-estate industries. Nothing short of blocking Fannie's and Freddie's path to the taxpayers' wallets could have turned things around.