America's Most Wanted Couple: Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac

Here they are- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

Okay- seriously, Fannie Mae is really the "Federal National Mortgage Association" and Freddie Mac is the "Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation." They are two financial institutions, not grandparents, that share great responsibility in the recent financial meltdown. Sure, many individuals were allowed to get in over their heads, and they are to blame as well, but they were merely following the example of the federal government and are living beyond their means. See the National Debt clock here. And here's a recent article on the clock. Apparently it ran out of digits because of the recent financial intervention of the government. Would it hurt to just let these organizations and businesses drown on their own? I am sure that it would hurt, but maybe it would send a strong message and help us and others make more sound investments. If the government were to be compared to a business, I would never invest in it in the fiscal sense. It needs a infusion of new blood, though- a MAJOR blood transfusion. I wish a candidate would balance the budget and create a plan to pay off the national debt.

My brother send me an e-mail about a week ago citing one of the origins of the current financial meltdown. I will quote Kimball from his e-mail:

The New York Times link below explains the hand the government had in creating the current mortgage crisis. The article was written in 1999, and occurred within Clinton's administration. This article was sent to me by my politically savvy friend, Mike Taylor.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F958260

Today I ran across another article today on DeseretNews.com as well that cited a Republican-sponsored bill that was never voted on in the Senate, possibly in part due to a group paid large sums of money by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to lobby against the bill. Glad to know that a lot of Republicans in the Senate could see this financial meltdown coming:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,705256560,00.html

Isn't it nice to know that we can live life based on sound principles? I found it interesting that it was primarily Democrats in Congress that were primarily voting for the economic bailout proposed by President Bush and that it was a crew of Republicans that did not like the looks of the bailout package initially.

I think that a lot more time should have been spent in analyzing the problem, or that smaller bills should have been passed, incrementally, each with a specific target on what it was intended to do, not a one-size-fits-all mega-bill.

I can remember somewhere in the mid/late-1990's when I was sitting next to a guy in choir practice who was asking what I thought about the national debt. I told him that I thought it would come back to bite us one day and that the government and nation would fall on its face financially if it did not do something to pay the debt. One loses credibility with so much debt. We reap what we sow, right?

What would I do about it?
Turn Mitt Romney loose on the problem. He'd probably help for free.