Fannie, Freddie to be seized

Today marks a defining point in our nation's history, and another shameful mark on the Bush Administration and Republican lead Congress for most of the last eight years:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/5986528.html
WASHINGTON - Senior officials from the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve on Friday informed top executives of mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that the government was preparing to seize the two companies and place them in a conservatorship, officials and company executives briefed on the discussions said.

The plan, effectively a government bailout, was outlined in separate meetings that the chief executives were summoned to attend on Friday at the office of the companies' new regulator. The executives were told that, under the plan, they and their boards would be replaced, shareholders would be virtually wiped out, but the companies would be able to continue functioning with the government generally standing behind their debt, people briefed on the discussions said.

When things turned bad (now), the government decided to cover their losses.  In short - the rich can't lose in this game.  They - by means of legal theft - take our nation's wealth when things are great.  They absolve themselves of any mismanagement and use fearmongering to get away with it when the tide changes.

If this isn't yet another wakeup call - that we need serious change - I don't know what is.  It's time for our nation to take the keys back from the Bush administration and put them in the hands of someone we can trust.

Here's a bit of history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
Fannie Mae was founded as a government agency in 1938 as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal to provide liquidity to the mortgage market. For the next 30 years, Fannie Mae held a virtual monopoly on the secondary mortgage market in the United States.

In 1968, to remove the activity of Fannie Mae from the annual balance sheet of the federal budget, it was converted into a private corporation.[8] Fannie Mae ceased to be the guarantor of government-issued mortgages, and that responsibility was transferred to the new Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae).

So where did Freddie Mac come from?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
From 1938 to 1968, the secondary mortgage market in the United States was monopolized by the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), which was a government agency during that period. In 1968, to help balance the federal budget, part of Fannie Mae was converted to a private corporation. To provide competition in the secondary mortgage market, and to end Fannie Mae's monopoly, Congress chartered Freddie Mac as a private corporation.

I'm not sure how Republicans are going to spin this.  I can guarantee you one thing: they won't take responsibility for their lack of leadership over the last eight years.

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