Sheldon Richman
Now This Is News
From the Wall Street Journal (subscription site):
Barney Frank has been all over the airwaves this week with a clear and—we never thought we’d say this—perfectly sound message about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: “They should be abolished.”
Considering that Frank has been one of the principal backers and beneficiaries of the so-called government-sponsored enterprises, this is indeed good news.
Doesn’t Frank also join Ron Paul in calling for an audit of the Fed? What’s going on?
Comment by VA Classical Liberal on 19 August 2010:
Don’t get too excited. Frank isn’t calling for the end of government involvement in housing finance. He just wants to replace Fannie and Freddie with some other, identical-in-all-but-name set of agencies.
From Reuters:
“The Federal Housing Administration should be fully self-financing and Freddie and Fannie should be replaced with a new mechanism to help subsidize housing”, Frank said in the interview.
“There is no more hybrid private-public,” the Massachusetts Democrat suggested. “If we want to subsidize housing then we could do it upfront and let the budget be clear about that.”
Sounds like he wants to institutionalize the once implicit, now all to explicit Fannie/Freddie guarantee.
Not an improvement.
Comment by Tony on 19 August 2010:
Isn’t the Audit the Fed Bill being held up in committee (by Bwarny)?
Comment by Chris Whited on 23 August 2010:
You have to love the notion of “affordable housing”. If it’s so affordable then why the need of subprime loans and vouchers? Because it’s not affordable unless someone else is paying through someone else’s Altruistic notions. Socialism 101 … just change the name.
Comment by Anonymous on 8 September 2010:
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