Bush Nationalized the Mortgage Business

But this is an extreme statement you say? Unfortunately, it's not. In reality, that's what's been done. The government now owns over 50% of home mortgages in the U.S. and it's an extremely dangerous position.

MSN Money

A desperate but necessary bailout
9/9/2008
By Jon Markman
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/SuperModels/a-desperate-but-necessary-bailout.aspx


The Treasury's intervention to shore up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac allays the fears of foreign investors, but turning around the US economy will take something close to a miracle.

The government's stunning takeover of troubled mortgage titans Fannie Mae (FNM, news, msgs) and Freddie Mac (FRE, news, msgs) on Sunday was sold to the public as a prudent, measured attempt to restore order to the U.S. housing market and keep people in their homes.
But look an inch beneath the public-relations job that most media outlets have accepted and you'll find the sad spectacle of a desperate borrower trying to stay one step ahead of its creditors.

The new plan put forward by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is a bailout all right. But not of Americans in Kansas and California who have lost their homes to foreclosure. Not by a long shot. Instead, it's an expensive ploy to keep the sovereign wealth funds and central banks of China, Kuwait and Singapore from foreclosing on their Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt and plunging the U.S. economy into chaos.

Announced on the first weekend of the new pro football season, the deal amounts to a frantic Hail Mary pass. It was a throw Paulson never wanted to make, as it exposes taxpayers to unlimited losses and violates every rule in the capitalist playbook, yet circumstances left him with few alternatives.