Well, it's good to hear so many no-holds-barred free market capitalists coming over to the side of socialism in light of the Fannie/Freddie crisis. Yes, I keep hearing about how the government "had" to do the bailout. Aren't these the same people who always talk about how the "market" is supposed to correct these little problems? Where is the market now?

Just so you know, if you think that the gov't had to bailout Fannie & Freddie, you are now either a socialist or a hypocrite...take your pick. I'm not making an argument for or against the bailout, I'm just stating the obvious.

I think they should have let them fail, honestly. The only argument I see for propping them up is if it's cheaper for us to do that than to clean up the mess.

I couldn't give a rats-ass about foreign banks. They buy up bonds to keep their currencies artificially low. Because they kept buying up the bonds, Fannie kept lending money.

Their shit currency policies exacerbated our housing bubble and now we're helping them out by giving out Treasury-quality risk at higher than Treasury rates--nice.

I'd be more than happy to let them fail. These "government sponsored private corporations" should never have existed in the first place.

All they are is a cushy job-placement service for dem politicians who've either been voted out of office or left voluntarily for the "private sector." At least that will come to an end now.

"Just so you know, if you think that the gov't had to bailout Fannie & Freddie, you are now either a socialist or a hypocrite"

Please, explain how there are only TWO possibilities here.

Thank you, true conservative! I wish that you were in office right now saying those things. That way, we could run a true campaign that contrasts free-market solutions (republicans) vs. responsible gov't regulation of the economy (democrats). The free-market solution is, "let the banks fail, the chips fall where they may, and the market will correct itself (after millions of families have lost their homes, there are runs on the American dollar, and the economy collapses)." This would at least be consistent with the disdain for properly funding the government in more prosperous times.

Then, the Democrats would completely rout the Republicans in the upcoming election. Instead, I hear a bunch of hypocritical conservatives saying how "we need to do this to save the economy." After this little dust-up is all over with, these same people will be telling us how "we" need the government off of "our" backs. What a bunch of flip-floppers! Stick to your principles. Either the free-market fixes everything, or it doesn't.

Again, I'm not an economist and I'm not advocating for or against the bailout. I generally prefer the gov't to play a regulatory role in our economy as opposed to a free-for-all and I vote democratic, but that is probably because I wasn't born into vast quantities of wealth, and I put myself through school on gov't subsidized loans and scholarships.

Well, I would have to ask what you think socializing the losses by Fannie & Freddie amounts to? I, along with the rest of American taxpayers, are shouldering their burden. Is that the "free-market"? The way I see it, if you support the bailout, you are not a true free-market capitalist.

If I had my way, these corrupt, semi-private companies would not exist in the first place. So we wouldn't have this problem, now would we?

Sure, but Bear Stearns wasn't semi-private, was it? It seems like the whole banking industry got greedy & sloppy. In a truly free-market, they would have learned their lesson. Instead, we get privatized profits and socialized debt. They win, I lose.

endless_nameless:

Sure, but Bear Stearns wasn't semi-private, was it? It seems like the whole banking industry got greedy & sloppy. In a truly free-market, they would have learned their lesson. Instead, we get privatized profits and socialized debt. They win, I lose.

Again, I would have let them fail. It simply isn't taxpayers' job to bail out these companies.

I'm all for reasonable regulation to make sure people aren't getting ripped off. But markets really do work, given half a chance.

Neither of these bailouts amount to socialism. In the Bear Sterns deal, the Fed simply guaranteed $30 billion of assets to entice Dimon to take the thing over. That's government involvement, but it's government involvement to hasten the flow of creative destruction and capitalism. The gov't isn't running Bear and should see a return on it's $30 billion insurance. Freddie and Fannie are different matters than Bear, but it's not as though the GSEs were private companies to begin with. They've always been implicitly backed by the Federal government and now they're actually backed by the Federal government. When the Treasury overtakes Ford, GM or Citi, we should talk about socialism. Right now what we have is government involvement in capitalism. It's not a binary decision between laissez-faire capitalism and pre-2000 Scandinavia

It might be much more like Fascism under Mussolini.

I'm simply saying that if you think that it is appropriate to use taxpayer money to bailout Fannie & Freddie, then you are for socialized debt. If you think that it was the responsible thing to do, then it would also be responsible to have had the profits they made during the past decade going into a trust fund and not to shareholders and CEO's. I never liked the semi-private aspect of Fannie & Freddie and I saw this coming along time ago. It is the GOP's dream of privatized profits & socialized debt. Not exactly free market principles at work here. At least the True Conservative is consistent in that she thinks they should have been allowed to fail. I've got no beef with conservatives who have that point of view.

Oh, and when the Treasury overtakes Ford and starts building our cars, then we're communists.

"Just so you know, if you think that the gov't had to bailout Fannie & Freddie, you are now either a socialist or a hypocrite...take your pick."

I am SO tired of hearing this overblown rhetoric about "socialism". Any involvement or oversight whatsoever by the government is socialism? Please, you don't even remember what real socialism looks like. We have the most unregluated "free market" economy in the world. The rest of the Western world is far more socialistic than we are and that is why we occasionally have these big scandals and bail outs. Corporate America cries about the "burden" of regulation and then when our compliant politicians lift them big business starts bending and breaking the rules. What we need is a free market system with moderate governmental regulation to control the most obvious abuses of private industry and stabalize the economy.

fannie and freddie are playgrounds for leftists politicians and their baubles. the feds guarantees these loans under the guise of 'affordable housing' and chumps like biden, dodd, kennedy and the usual suspects directed them to loosen standards to the various mortgage companies.

the mortgage companies are not blameless by any means, but to guarantee some of these questionable loans is idiocy that has been ongoing and to say that the bailout is socialism is somewhat correct and the program itself is a hybrid of socialism where the risk has been socialized by the government and the profit is private.

scrap the fucking things ASAP. put the risk AND the profit back into the private sector where it belongs. no matter how much money they throw at democrat poiticians. look at the political contributions fanny and freddy have given to see who has been playing around. you will see that they are democrat muckity mucks,

Then you haven't demonstrated your point.

Your view of socialsim is simplistic.