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Some people are misinterpreting my goal in my set of posts today in the new "Government intervention in housing" category. I’m not casting aspersions or going on record or innuendoing. Well, maybe a little of the latter.
I’m trying to educate myself. I didn’t pay any attention to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or the FHA or Section 8 until a few weeks ago. It just wasn’t on my radar screen. Some people in the comments to my Forbes piece questioned the argument that the government really did lean on or pressure or require the GSE’s to help with affordable housing. So I thought it would be useful to go back and find articles written mostly in real time, not with the wisdom of hindsight, that quantified that or described it.
Think of it as an online notebook. In case I want to write something on it, these are some references I’d like to have. I thought you might find it interesting, too. If not, ignore them.
And my other goal was to begin to counter the claims of people who argue that the housing meltdown was just another case of how markets fail. Maybe. But I thought I should educate myself on government’s role in intervening. I don’t know how extensive it was. It’s certainly more extensive than I thought.