Fannie Mae-No Politics (FNMA)

[AngelaNBayern]

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"The GSEs are creatures of the federal government, not the states. They were “privatized” in name only under the Administration of Lyndon Johnson, more as an effort at fiscal window dressing than as a serious attempt to separate them from the federal government in a financial, operational or risk perspective. "

Really? I call bull sh*t. You can scare quote the word privatized all you want but it won't alter the fact that the GSE's were incorporated and listed on the NYSE as publicly traded corporations, signallng to investors that both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were, in fact, shareholder owned corporate entities. I can't think of any government entities that are listed on the NYSE or NASDAQ, can you? So if the GSE's were actually government entities all along, then the government has defrauded the GSE investors by misrepresenting Fannie and Freddie as shareholder owned corporations, and it can and should be sued on that basis alone. More than any other single action taken during and after the meltdown, the government take-over of Fannie and Freddie destroyed trust in our systems and institutions: trust in the fairness of government, trust in the ability of our legal system to protect us from government over-reach, and trust that the markets operate in a way that does not inherently disavantage small players. There will very likely never again be robust participation in the markets by small retail investors, and deservedly so.