What a surprise. Now that Fannie Mae is making money - after the federal government came in and bailed them out in 2008 - the Trump administration is now proposing to "privatize" the housing market agency.
Specifically, with a net income of $16 billion in 2018 the Trump administration wants to turn Fannie Mae over to private investors, again.
______________________________
For those of you who may not be familiar with Fannie Mae, know that it's a federal agency that was formed after the Great Depression. The thinking then was "there's only so much money in the housing market, so let's create a government agency - Fannie Mae - to purchase privately originated loans, which will put more money back into the housing market."
If your a little confused think of "It's a Wonderful Life", which starred Jimmy Stewart. Imagine how many more loans the Bailey Brothers' Building & Loan would have been able to move if they had a Fannie Mae to purchase the home loans they originated. In simpler terms, Fannie Mae purchases, holds and manages housing loans made by private lending institutions. Lending institutions end up with more money to lend because of the purchases, and we all have a wonderful life because home ownership goes up (and it did) which is instrumental to a strong middle-class.
It's a little more complex than that, but concept remains. Not only did housing markets stabilize after the depression, but home loans soared in America, as did the nation's middle-class.
Fannie Mae and other Government Secured Entities (GSEs) ran into problems when they were privatized (1968) and then deregulated in the 1980s. Fannie Mae and other GSEs (like Freddie Mac) started purchasing not just home loans, but toxic collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) tied to the housing market. These privately sourced bad bets, which were originated largely by shadow banking institutions and Wall Street, helped collapse Fannie Mae's income and helped bring down the housing market in 2008.
Once the market collapsed in 2008 the federal government stepped in and bailed out "private" financial institutions - like Fannie Mae - who were drowning in their own free market greed and stupidity.
So, here we are, more than 10 years after the 2008 market collapse, and Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other GSEs are doing so well they're actually making money for the federal government. With billions of dollars now rolling in they are now considered "cash cows" for the federal government. With a nation facing a wave of red ink because of the Trump administration's reckless budget management, Fannie and Freddie are a breath of fresh air.
So what does the Trump administration want to do? They are proposing to turn over two stable and profitable agencies - which were designed to be government managed institutions all along - to the same free market fools who ran these agencies (and other GSEs) into the ground, which helped precipitate the 2008 market collapse.
This is yet another lesson in American Capitalism, where we socialize the losses when things go bad, and then privatize the profits when things are going well.
The stupid, it burns.
- Mark
No comments:
Post a Comment