A bad ideaPublished in Housing Finance International Journal.The U.S. national housing finance market is uniquely dominated by two government mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They do exactly the same thing, creating mortgage-backed securities that are de facto government-guaranteed. They are both completely dependent on the credit support of the U.S. Treasury, and thus dependent on American taxpayers. Both went broke in 2008, and both were bailed out by the Treasury, which still owns $193 billion of their senior preferred stock, sixteen years later. Both are in an unending conservatorship of a very political government bureaucracy, the Federal Housing Finance Agency. They are in effect a single huge market intervention and subsidy.Fannie/Freddie are truly massive, with
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