Is a Bailout for the FHA In the Works?

Americans now own Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the combined $5.2 trillion, heavily politicized housing finance companies nationalized in the fall of 2008, bringing to taxpayers large sums of subprime, no doc, alt-A loans and securitizations that no one wants, backed by abandoned houses.

U.S. taxpayers also own their cousin, the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae), the government cheese program of mortgages, as it also is fast becoming a trillion-dollar purveyor of loans and securitizations.

And U.S. taxpayers may soon be asked to bail out the Federal Housing Administration, which insures Ginnie’s loans, two million of them.