“Outrageous” is the first word that comes to mind.
The next three words that come to mind are “We are screwed.”
The first sentence that comes to mind is: “It’s outrageous that we’re being screwed once again by the government and its crony capitalists at Fannie Mae.”
While we’ve been distracted by President Trump’s flurry of activity, Fannie Mae has announced that it will be underwriting billions of dollars in debt for Wall Street firms to invest in the building of rental housing.
We should be running down to the nearest farm implement store to buy pitchforks instead of waiting in line at Starbucks to fork over a lot of moolah for a little mocha. Oh well, I have a dream.
This would be the same Fannie Mae that was established as a government-sponsored enterprise with the mission to increase home ownership. Now it will be using its federal government backing to increase rental housing, which will compete with residential housing. It matters not that there is a glut of rental units in many locales.
This also would be the same Fannie Mae that carried out the government’s loony housing policies that caused the last housing bubble and collapse, instantly wiping out the credit of millions of families, causing the Great Recession, and resulting in George W. Bush and his merry band of bandits bailing out Wall Street with your money. None of the guilty parties is serving prison time.
And it’s the same Fannie Mae that has been used as a source of patronage for pols of both parties, including the likes of Newt Gingrich and Barney Frank, who indeed make strange bedfellows. Neither of these guys is serving prison time, although it would be entertaining to watch them as bunkmates at Leavenworth.
As with its sugar daddy of the federal government, Fannie Mae is a repository of affirmative action, a place where one’s race and ethnicity are more important than one’s competence or ethics. Its former Chairman and CEO Franklin Raines was finally fired for cooking the books, but only after he made $20 million in salary, bonus and stock in one year. He is not serving prison time. (See a trend here?)
Why is Fannie branching out into the funding of rental housing? Well, there is the stated reason and the real reason.
The stated reason is that a large swath of peasants can no longer afford to buy homes, due to losing so much money and creditworthiness in the housing bust; and also due to being burdened with student debt and other debt. Ironically, as already stated, the government caused the housing bubble and bust; now it is going to create a similar problem in rental housing.
The government also caused tuition debt to skyrocket. It did this in two ways. First, it enabled students without the IQ to be in college to attend college, oftentimes with the “students” using college as an extension of the welfare state, with no intention to ever pay back the tuition loan. Second, the government not only flooded colleges with easy tuition money but also with subsidies and grants of every description. This made colleges insensitive to cost, which caused the price of college to skyrocket and triggered a building spree of Taj Mahal facilities and sports arenas on campuses.
Neither of these two causes of student indebtedness has been covered much in the numbskull media, which shows the true value of a journalism degree. Imagine going into debt to get such a degree. A double travesty. No wonder so many journalists are left-wingers who want to overthrow capitalism.
The real reason for Fannie branching out into the funding of rental housing is the political power of the real estate industry, which is not only one of the most powerful lobbies at the federal level but rivals teacher unions in lobbying power at the state level. To block any attempts to reduce the flow of money from Fannie to the industry, all the industry has to do is lie that the reduction will reduce home ownership and hurt the little guy.
In a just nation, Fannie executives would be serving time in prison. Instead, they will be serving time in the swank new Fannie headquarters in the Imperial City of Washington, DC. For a photo of the palace and the cost overruns of the travesty, see the story at the following link.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/digger/wp/2016/06/16/growing-cost-of-planned-fannie-mae-headquarters-comes-under-fire/?utm_term=.e22eb503156a
Note that the palace is made of glass, which would make it hard for peasants to climb the walls and overthrow the royalty inside, assuming that Americans would ever have the sense and gumption to do the right thing.
In our defense, it’s awfully hard to be nimble enough to storm the palace with Fannie protruding out of our fanny.
