Reinflating the Housing Bubble: Making the Same Mistake Again

Charles Gasparino does a very nice job exposing Freddie Mac,  Fannie Mae, and their advocates for the destructive forces that they are. Everyone, even Obama for a while, recognizes that at the heart of the financial markets meltdown was the collapse in the US housing market, which itself was a bubble enabled in various ways by government programs explicitly designed to increase the percentage of people owning homes.

Whether through the Community Reinvestment Act or through a relentless Federal Reserve bank policy of next-to-zero percent interest rates or guarantees of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (and major incentives to them to buy any mortgage on secondary markets no matter how dubiously documented or financed), it’s clear that pro-home-ownership policies massively increased housing prices and risky loans.

Yet what blows my mind, is that currently the government is again pumping billions of dollars into various programs to increase home ownership rates and to stabilize or increase home values throughout the country.

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Tags: Charles Gasparino, Fannie Mae, financial meltdown, Freddie Mac, housing bubble
Posted Oct 29th 2009 at 9:45 am in Economics, Obama, Politics | 2251818 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/vderugy/2009/10/29/reinflating-the-housing-bubble-making-the-same-mistake-again/Reinflating+the+Housing+Bubble%3A+Making+the+Same+Mistake+Again2009-10-29+16%3A45%3A38Veronique++de+Rugy