Opinion: Why should you pay for Fannie and Freddie?
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Former House majority leader Dick Armey has an Op/Ed in the Wall Street Journal asking why the responsible majority has been pushed aside in the rush to ‘do something’ about the misbehavior of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the lenders they guaranteed and the borrowers who are now defaulting. Armey notes, as did I, that a substantial majority of Americans are opposed to the bailout plan that is about to become law, and highlights a fun wrinkle: A veto-sustaining bloc of House Republicans ‘voted against the bill on the very same day that the Bush administration caved.’ But he holds out hope that the House-Senate reconciliation process could still turn into a fight. The play-by-play:
Actions by Fannie and Freddie management and their regulators this year precipitated the current crisis. Under pressure from the Democrat-controlled Congress, the Bush administration lifted Fannie and Freddie’s portfolio caps in February and reduced their capital reserve requirements in March. In this year’s stimulus bill, Congress went further and nearly doubled the size of the loans that Fannie and Freddie can purchase or guarantee. As a result of this reckless expansion, the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) now touch nearly 70% of all new mortgages. At the same time, they are insolvent by most measures. The ostensible purpose of Fannie and Freddie is to provide liquidity to America’s housing markets. In practice, they are the source of systemic risk and instability in a time of need. What is needed now is an orderly restructuring that protects taxpayers from such financial exposure in the future, such as the plan proposed by Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas). Mr. Hensarling’s legislation would phase out the charter of either GSE over a five-year period if they access credit lines from the Federal Reserve or Treasury. It also provides a receivership option if the GSEs continue to stumble. Instead, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson offered the beleaguered GSEs and their patrons in Congress a blank check signed by the taxpayers, promising potentially unlimited funds to backstop the lenders. Not surprisingly, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd accepted.
Whole article. All I can say is people must have a lot of confidence in Hank Paulson. That federal guarantee is potentially ruinous, not least for the Foundation question that informs so many public policy crises: Aren’t we better off not trying to prevent the collapse, and instead just getting it over with as fast as possible?
Suppose all the doomsaying on Fannie and Freddie is right, that the GSEs will take the rest of us down with them when they sink. Interest rates will soar, real estate will plummet, blah blah blah. Why would this not happen anyway with a guarantee from a heavily indebted government? Does Uncle Sam have $5 trillion lying around that nobody knows about? Aren’t the worst-case scenarios about the death of the dollar and irreperable damage to the government’s good faith and credit more rather than less likely to come true under the bailout plan?
This kind of thing makes me sad, but more in a no-more-worlds-to-conquer way than a there-goes-my-money way. Most of my adult life I’ve longed to see the U.S. government commit collective suicide. Now that it’s actually happening I feel strangely empty.