Whenever Congress does anything in the name of housing, if you take a good whiff, you'll smell pork.

Arnold Kling, on the latest attempt of the Congressional Democrats to double down on their last great idea, allowing Fannie and Freddie to buy up jumbo mortgage loans. Greg Ransom is channeling a similar thought. He points to Franklin Raines, former head of Fannie, who says the reason we need to bail out the GSEs now is that Bush and the Fed didn't explicitly say they would bail them out years ago. Um, yeah. Justin Fox comments:

Raines's depiction of them as successful private companies that aren't really reliant on taxpayer backing sounds a lot like somebody who was born on third base hitting a triple.

I'm sure I can steal that one in another context some day.

BTW, KNSI tomorrow, the Patriot Saturday. Show details tomorrow.

Labels: economics, housing