Government Faces Tough Decisions About How To Stabilize Mortgage Market

washingtonpost.com:

Only one lender of consequence remains: the federal government, which undertook one of its earliest and most dramatic rescues of the financial crisis by seizing control a year ago of the two largest mortgage finance companies in the world, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Government officials generally agree that it would be better for private lenders to resume their traditional role as major providers of finance for home loans. But policymakers now face some tough choices. They must decide how to reduce support for the mortgage market without letting it collapse. And they must decide what kind of support the government should provide in the long run.

Read the whole story: washingtonpost.com

Comments

[dadw5boys]

06:21 PM on 09/07/2009

Re-value all homes down 34 % --- the average of the overvaluation of subprime lenders ; then fix the rate and figure the payments,

DONE !!!!

[nellieh]

11:31 AM on 09/07/2009

The tax payers bailing out the bankers puts obscene amounts of money in their pockets. The tax payer having a single payer healthcare syatem removes an even more obscene amount of money from insurers. Who bribes congress?

[tompoe]

11:14 AM on 09/07/2009

Corporate media remains in denial. The housing market has collapsed. Someone get the big crayolas out for these jerks.

[jason10006]

10:47 AM on 09/07/2009

It's funny how in "socialist" Europe, there are no equivalents to Fannie and Freddie. Ditto for Canada and Australia. It's really just corporate welfare.

[ejhickey]

09:11 AM on 09/07/2009

we need MORE foreclosures , not less. If the banks have to take losses on these properties, too bad

[yappnmutt]

03:26 AM on 09/07/2009

what's the problem? the taxpayer(a euphemism for the middle class) will just back everything and everybody(in the top 1% of wealth owners) up. just keep piling on the risk. we are americans. we can do! we won't let our owners fail. what will we do without them?

this article makes me want to eject my dinner across the room at a high velocity. no one in charge has a clue what they are doing except that they must bail out the superwealthy at all costs.

[Prakosh]

02:34 AM on 09/07/2009

WOW, They still haven't figured out what they are going to do longterm to stabilize the market--this can't be good news. I know that banks haven't been lending. And things are pretty screwed up. I have a friend who has a loan and he heard that a credit union that he belongs to has partnered with the Federal government to reduce mortgage payments. But when he went to the credit union they told him that he had to have a Fannie or Freddie loan, and there was nothing in his paper work indicating that he had such a loan. He had gotten the original loan through Wells Fargo and he still makes his mortgage payment through Wells Fargo. Then the other day he had his sister who works at a different bank run his credit and check some thing out and it turns out that Wells Fargo sold his loan to Fannie and he may qualify for the reduced mortgage payment after all. But there was nothing in his paper work that told him this and evidently Wells Fargo did not have to tell him this. I don't understand how or why the credit union didn't realize that the loan had been sold, but it had. This is a prime loan too; not a subprime.