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  1. Havakasha is offline
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    Joined: Sep 2009 Posts: 5,358
    02-17-2012, 06:43 PM #21
    This was an attempt to have a discussion on fannie and freddie. Can you start another thread
    on the Austrian school of economics? Thanks.

    I have already demonstrated over and over and over and over again how some people from ALL political persuations predicted the bursting of this bubble. Here is one example of a Conservative
    acknowledging that.


    "OK after browsing through his archives circa 2005, I must retract my earlier criticism of Paul Krugman. For sure, Krugman did identify the housing bubble before many other analysts (including me), and so he’s not bluffing when he says nowadays that he called it. Also, people who comment at his site should be a little more nuanced instead of saying things like, “None of you Keynesian wizards saw this coming, so why should we listen to you now? Only Peter Schiff and the Austrians predicted the crash.”



    And I have already demonstrated over and over and over again how Mr.Schiff gets one prediction right about every 10 years (ok thats a little exaggeration). Just because they got one right doesnt mean they didnt get many more WRONG.

    Im starting to think you are incapable of admitting the truth about Schiff. Scary.

    Now move along. Start a new thread and watch me destroy your thesis. Chicken.
    Last edited by Havakasha; 02-17-2012 at 07:12 PM.

  2. Havakasha is offline
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    Joined: Sep 2009 Posts: 5,358
    02-17-2012, 06:44 PM #22
    Fannie and Freddie Dont Deserve Blame for Bubble.

    When you see the Republican party point to Fannie and Freddie as the cause of all our housing
    problems one should think deeply about why they boil a complex issue down to a simple talking point.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/reales...y.html?hpid=z3

    By Mark Zandi, Published: January 24

    There is plenty of blame to go around for the U.S. housing bubble, but not much of it belongs to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two giant housing-finance institutions made many mistakes over the decades, some of them real whoppers, but causing house prices to soar and then crater during the past decade weren’t among them.

    The biggest culprits in the housing fiasco came from the private sector, and more specifically from a mortgage industry that was out of control. These included lenders who originated home loans, investment bankers who packaged them into securities, rating agencies that misjudged these securities, and global investors who bought them without much, if any, study.

    In other words, America’s mortgage securitization machine was fundamentally broken. It created millions of mortgage loans that, even under reasonable economic assumptions, stood little chance of being repaid — and were not. As a result, hundreds of billions of dollars were lost as defaults and write-downs brought the financial system, and the wider economy, to the brink, requiring a massive government bailout.

    Also to blame, of course, were regulators, who gave the private mortgage market little, if any, oversight. The market’s watchdogs were lulled to sleep by a misplaced view that self-interested private financial institutions would regulate themselves. This flawed thinking was most pervasive at the nation’s most important financial regulatory agency, the Federal Reserve.

    Getting history right for this dark economic period is critical if we are to design a better mortgage finance system for the future. If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are responsible for the debacle, then perhaps government’s role in a future mortgage finance system should be minimal. But if private lenders deserve most of the blame, the case grows for giving government an important role in backstopping and overseeing the system.

    “If it grows like a weed, it probably is a weed.” This age-old banking adage aptly applies to the private mortgage lending business during the housing bubble. Between 2004 and 2007, private lenders originated three quarters of all subprime and alt-A mortgage loans. These were loans to financially fragile homeowners with credit scores under 660, well below the U.S. average, which is closer to 700. But only a fourth of such loans were originated by government agencies, including Fannie, Freddie and the Federal Housing Administration.

    The dollar amount of subprime and alt-A loans made during this period by the private sector was jaw-dropping, reaching nearly $600 billion at the height of the lending frenzy in 2006. For context, this is about equal to the total amount Americans currently owe on bank credit cards. By contrast, government lenders made just over $100 billion in subprime and alt-A loans in 2006. Even in 2007, when the housing market was beginning its free fall, private lenders still handed out more than $300 billion via these very shaky mortgage loans.

    All this can be seen in the share of total residential mortgage debt insured or owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. At the start of 2002, before the housing boom got going, the two agencies’ market share accounted for almost 54 percent of all mortgage debt. By summer 2006, the bubble’s apex, their share had fallen to only 40 percent. It is difficult to see how the agencies could have been responsible for inflating the housing bubble at a time when they were losing a full 14 percentage points of market share. Indeed, the opposite was true, as their position in the housing market rapidly diminished.


    Click on link to 2nd page.

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