Flashback: American Enterprise Institute on Fannie-Freddie in 1999
September 30, 2008
Last week I linked to a 2005 AEI article about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Well, they were six years ahead of me. In 1999, Peter Wallison from the AEI made this prediction:
''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''
The full article from the New York Times is fascinating:
In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
Again, read the full article. And send it to your friends who keep claiming that "free markets" caused the market meltdown. (Free markets were partially responsible, but Wall Street fat cats could never have crashed the market without the unholy help from Fannie and Freddie.)
Unrelated meta-commentary: Isn't the Internet great? Politicians and the powerful have not found a way to control it. So honest citizens can easily find historical information. That Times article is almost ten years old. Yet it's now just a click away.
Before the Internet, there were databases available to the rich. If you had $50 to run a Lexis-Nexis search, you could educate yourself. Now, even the common folk can find information.