NY Times Feature: Life Without Fannie or Freddie

Imagining Life Without Fannie and Freddie
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON


Published: February 12, 2011

KUDOS to Treasury and the Department of Housing and Urban Development for some straight talk about the nation’s broken mortgage system.

A report to Congress from those departments, published on Friday, provided some long-awaited analysis by the Obama administration about what went wrong in housing finance — and how to fix it.

The report, entitled “Reforming America’s Housing Finance Market,” zeros in on the perverse incentives created by the nation’s mortgage complex during the years leading up to the panic of 2008. The Treasury’s recommendation that we wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and let the private mortgage market step in is spot on.
Still, it is not clear that such moves, sensible though they are, will be enough to prevent taxpayers from having to bail out institutions that back mortgages in the future. That is because the debate over how to put the Treasury’s ideas into effect will soon become a brawl. Powerful participants are already working overtime to keep taxpayers on the hook.  CLICK HERE for Full Article

CNN Money Reports- What Will Happen With Real Estate Market?

Bull vs. Bear: Will housing rebound?

Posted by Nin-Hai Tseng, writer-reporter

December 27, 2010 3:00 am

It's a question many Americans want answered: Will the value of my home rise or fall next year? Smart minds fall in both camps -- here are both sides of the coin on real estate.
One of the most closely watched sectors in 2011 will continue to be real estate – a wildly emotional and divisive topic that's puzzled investors and economists since the housing bubble burst around 2007. Earlier this year, many observers thought the market would turn around in a big way as federal tax credits spurred home purchases and the economy added jobs following hundreds of billions of dollars of government stimulus spending.
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