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Dave Stuhlsatz's avatar

Trump likes to look for what he perceives to be big and easy wins, but he has no interest in details or sustained engagement. Hence, fiddling with Fannie and Freddie allows him to feel like some sort of free-market capitalist hero, but as you note in this post, nothing will probably change if this "privatizing" scheme even succeeds. The federal government has always back-stopped and regulated home mortgages in the modern era to varying degrees of success. These days, we barely build enough housing per year to make those institutions seem big anymore.

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Benjamin Cole's avatar

Interesting post.

In another lifetime, I worked for the S&L in Washington, for an industry lobby group.

S&L's were allowed to pay a quarter-point more on passbook accounts than commercial banks, and this is how some money was funneled into housing. That was called Regulation Q.

The industry joke was, "I believe America, free enterprise and Regulation Q."

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It is an interesting proposition, the business of "marking to market" S&L or commercial bank assets. As banks and S&L's always have huge amounts of loans outstanding in relation to reserves, any decline in asset (loan) value turns the lender insolvent. Any serious recession, or 2008 event.

In other words, an inherently fragile financial system.

Yet it is through this Rube Goldberg system that we have chosen to implement monetary policy.

I might choose a different path, such as money-financed fiscal programs (while devising s sturdy banking system)...but surely that would generate new problems.

Still, I do not understand orthodox macroeconomists and their worship of fractional banking....

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