Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were intended to make it easier for people to own houses. By putting so much money into the system they created an artificial boom, a bubble. The whole darned thing is fueled with money borrowed from China. The result is a bubble that has been a big boon to property tax collectors, but saddles the middle class with enormous debts. More debts come from college loans. We are a nation of debtors.

Of course one "solution" is to confiscate the foreign investments and debts and money loaned. That has been done before. Kings and Emperors used to do it with aplomb.

The housing "boom" has been pure inflation: my house is worth 25 times what I paid for it 40 years ago. That makes no sense whatever. To think that a housing boom is fueling an expanding economy, particularly when many of the construction jobs go to illegal immigrants and unskilled labor, is a form of insanity only an economist could exhibit. Most of us know better.

The US doesn't MAKE very much. We have a booming economy based on exporting jobs and importing the stuff the people whose jobs were exported used to make. And paying for it by borrowing from China. Water always runs downhill. Eventually it hits bottom.