I highly recommend this long but excellent piece, “Wall Street Lays Another Egg,” by Niall Ferguson in Vanity Fair. You’ll be smarter if you read even half.
Hat Tip: Ralph Hancock on the Postmodern Conservative blog @ Culture11
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NPRI has posted an easy to look at historical graphic of the housing crisis here in Vegas, complete with circles and arrows (ok, just arrows).
Posted by E!!
on September 21, 2008
Corruption and Greed, Economy, Fleecing the Taxpayers, Government Spending, Liberty, Moral Busybodies / No Comments
Corruption and Greed, Economy, Fleecing the Taxpayers, Government Spending, Liberty, Moral Busybodies / No Comments
George Will recalls how in 1983 the U.S. government created Fannie Mae to advance its objective of increasing homeownership among Americans.
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In the midst of the dialectic maelstrom re: government bailouts (housing, investment banking, and now the auto industry), it is worth noting that if the matriarchal Nanny State had not baked her sugary, icing-laden Fannie Cake for the homeowner-less masses in the first place, we would not be suffering from these terrible stomach aches today.
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The creation of a quasi-governmental agency that implicitly guaranteed its obligations vis a vis the cash coffers of the American taxpayer so egregiously violated free market principles and common sense that I can scarce fathom how anyone thought it was a recipe worth mixing up to begin with.
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When a legislative prescription calls for one part socialism, we should tear the page to pieces while muttering, “We don’t serve that poison here.”
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I am reminded of this quote:
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”No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” – Mark Twain (1866)
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I shall now go chew on some Pepto tabs and try to quell this ache in my gut…
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(Hat Tip for the Twain quip to this list of 99 great libertarian/free market quotes by the guys over at All American Blogger.)
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(NOTE: The cooking analogies are dedicated to my new friend Kat who is a healthy cooking expert and the lovely much younger trophy wife of Blue Collar Muse. When she gets her blog up and running, I will link it up.)
Here’s Andy McCarthy today:
The mainstream press mindlessly repeats the mantra that Fan and Fred perform a “vital” role in making the dream of home ownership a reality for the lower middle class — increasing market liquidity and thus keeping mortgage rates low. In fact, these quasi-government entities have what is at best a marginally depressive effect on mortgage rates. To create such an artificial effect — however imperceptible — is not a good idea at all; but even if you think it is arguably beneficial, the benefit is palpably not worth $5 trillion in liabilities. And if the mortgage crisis has taught us anything, it is that: without any government intervention, lenders and borrowers will innovate mortgage arrangements; borrowers shouldn’t be encouraged to buy homes they can’t afford; and private/public entities are apt to pour gasoline on a fire.
The Hill is reporting that the Senate just passed the 2008 Fannie & Freddie Prop Up bill (72-13). The monster housing bill will now go to the White House for W’s Johnny Hancock. For what it’s worth, all 13 ’no’ votes were GOP-ers. Senator DeMint (R-SC) had delayed the bill over objections to F & F lobby rights, but in the end the R’s struck a deal with the Dems and passed it.
The bill will allow re-fi’s of up to $300 billion in distressed mortgages, give tax breaks galore in order to help the market, tighten future oversight of F & F – and (this is the real kicker) give the Treasury temporary authority to approve an unlimited line of credit for F & F. Now isn’t that sweet?! We, the taxpayers, are going to foot the bill for a bottomless pile of cash for two government-sponsored enterprises being run by people of questionable judgment.
If you wish to see this in a positive light, just read the first paragraph of today’s Washington Post story which says, “In a rare weekend session, the Senate today ended months of legislative wrangling and gave final approval to a sprawling housing bill that seeks to halt the steepest slide in home prices in a generation, rescue hundreds of thousands of families from foreclosure and restore confidence in the nation’s largest mortgage finance firms.”
(GAG!!)
Why-oh-why is it the job of Congress to interfere with the natural forces of the market, rescue people from foreclosure because they financed over-priced houses with adjusable-rate mortgages they now cannot afford, and restore confidence in two companies that probably deserve to fail due to poor management? Where in the Constitution does it say that the State is responsible for protecting its citizens from the natural consequences of their own poor judgment?!!
The Nanny State gets fatter while our dependence upon her grows…
