Fannie Mae-No Politics (FNMA)

[obiterdictum]

Clear the Air!

1. Those were not remarks by crawford2012. They are excepts without attribution from this Center for American Progress (CAP) article:

7 Things You Need to Know About Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/housing/report/2012/09/06/36736/7-things-you-need-to-know-about-fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac/

CAP supports the Democratic Party and Obama's Administration agenda in the same way that the Bipartisan Policy Center supports the moderate Republican Party agenda.

2. Have you read the the Levin-Coburn Report? The fact based report, though accurate, was partial and selective in its approach. Thus, you will not find the violations (crimes?) of 18 banks plus that were involved in undermining the housing economy and contributing to its collapse. The report demonstrated the framework of negligence, conflict of interest, deception and corruption in government regulators, credit rating agencies, investment and mortgage banks and other participants in the primary and secondary mortgage markets whose behaviors systemically converged to create the collapse of the housing finance system. It gives snapshots of key contributors in each of those areas but not all players and then makes sound recommendations so that it does not happen again.

Fannie and Freddie's misdeeds were performed by upper management and these were not exposed in any detail in that report and the GSEs were not targeted since they were relatively minor contributors by aggressively purchasing poorly underwrit loans to stay competitive in the market vs. the mortgage banks and brokers for the sake of their shareholders. One can even conceive of them as victims of a con game. Yet victims of a con game are victims because of the blinding effect of greed and desire to have more for litte and to dominate....

Balanced views are useful if one wishes to demonstrate what actually happened. I mentioned the Levin-Coburn report on this forum before it was posted on http://www.restorefanniemae.us/blog as one source of accurate information. However, it is not the sole source or the whoe story accurately told. Fannie and Freddie are hated by government officials on both sides of the aisle for reasons unrelated to the purchasing of default ready loans. It is important to know that story as well so it becomes clear how politicians have become so eager to reduce, dismantle and eliminate the GSEs seemingly without any substantial fiscal or financial reason.