A crime that will forever go unpunished

Apart from the lunatic amounts in fail-out capital injected into the nation's major -and major-league broke- lenders, Fannie and Freddie serve to provide the by far largest taxpayer funded subsidy to the banking system. That is wrong on a million different levels, but nowhere more so than in the carefully maintained delusion that this entire swindle actually performs a socially beneficial function and helps people fulfill their dreams. What it does in reality is help banks, not homebuyers. The latter of course have no vested interest in paying higher prices than they would have if the government would step away from the housing market.

90% of all mortgage loans are now government backed. As prices keep falling, and they will, the combination of inventory, job losses and foreclosures make it inevitable, the American people, whose credit stands behind the purchases and loans, is on the hook for the losses.