From the Movement Conservative/Republican blog "Redstate" (no, I won't put a link), of all places:
"Fannie and Freddie have issued $1.6 trillion in assets on top of $70 billion in shareholder equity. That's a rate of capital efficiency that's simply untouchable in the private world, and that's why mortgage interest rates have been so low (and home ownership rates so high) for so many years in the US.
If you were to fully open the mortgage market to private competition today, (which you simply can't because Fannie and Freddie already own or guarantee half of it, and it would take ten years for that to run off), retail mortgage rates would probably nearly DOUBLE, and housing values would plunge.
And what would happen then? That's right: Republicans and Democrats alike would be howling for a New New Deal."
Folk, the Hobbesian Dream is dead.
by
dlaw on
Mon Sep 08, 2008 at 01:59:52 PM PST
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