White House wants less gov't in mortgage system

[The Northerner]

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration wants to shrink the government's role in the mortgage system — a proposal that would remake decades of federal policy aimed at getting Americans to buy homes and would probably make home loans more expensive across the board.

The Treasury Department rolled out a plan on Friday to slowly dissolve Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored programs that bought up mortgages to encourage more lending and required bailouts during the 2008 financial crisis.

Exactly how far the government's role in mortgages would be reduced was left to Congress to decide, but all three options the administration presented would create a housing finance system that relies far more on private money.

"It's clear the administration wants the private sector to take a more prominent role in the mortgage rates, and in order for that to happen, mortgage rates have to go up," said Thomas Lawler, a housing economist in Virginia.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110211/ap_on_bi_ge/us_obama_housing

[DJ13]

1. Translation

The government wants private corporations to profit, except if things get bad again, in which case Uncle Sam will ride in and save the private corporation's ass...... again.

[boston bean]

2. and then tell us because we had to save them we gotta do that or the other thing

[EFerrari]

3. Gee, this isn't the foreclosure moratorium I'd hoped for from a Democractic admin.

[Tesha]

4. "Chains you can believe in!" (NT)

[Autumn]

5. Sad to say, but it seems the

White House wants more gov't in banking and corporation systems. That seems to be all they protect. The first paragraph says it all.

[MannyGoldstein]

6. This will drive down home prices further

Good for some, not for others.

[Hannah Bell]

7. the right has had a hard-on for federal homeownership programs for years.

first they got them to partially privatize them so they could rack up debt; now they want their total destruction.

oh, good, we can go back to the days when most people rented.

as they do now in a significant area of europe.

Germany has a home ownership rate of 42 percent, one of the lowest among industrialized countries. Among the reasons are the requirement for a large down payment (often 20 percent to 30 percent of the home's price) and laws that are very favorable to tenants, including limits on rent increases.

Switzerland, at 31 percent, has an even lower home ownership rate than Germany, while Denmark (51 percent), the Netherlands (53 percent), and France (55 percent) also rank near the bottom among countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2006/02/12/home_sweet_home/

[Catherina]

8. Rec'd with disgust. Next week "White House wants less gov't in banking system" n/t

[kentuck]

9. Yep....as soon as they buy up all the junk mortgages from the banks...

..so they can transfer all the costs to the taxpayers. Then they can dismantle it.