government bailout
About my previous missive on the government bailout of private companies, a reader wrote this: “Who authorized the ‘government’ to bail out these companies? (Was it) even debated in Congress? The millions of Americans who have lost their homes or are in danger of losing their homes would surely have a different opinion about what those blank checks should be used for.”
The question isn’t just a fair one. It’s a critical one.
Get out your checkbooks America.
The U.S. government decided to get into the mortgage-lending business and now holds an 80-percent stake in a major insurance company, and that means you and I must pay.
Fannie May and Freddie Mac, the only “private” lending institutions in the country with every penny of their loans backed by the U.S. government, have seen their default rates climb faster than a cat chasing a canary up a tree.
And their holdings have melted away like the Wicked Witch of the West hit with a bucket of water.
