Lex Luz

Freddie and Fannie: Living in the Past

Interestingly, the American middle class did pretty well before the securitization miracle took hold. Back when banking was a relatively simple endeavor (hey, I said "relatively," right?) and the watchword was "know thy customer," people had to do more than fog up a mirror to borrow a half-million dollars... and yet somehow, we managed to hold up. Fannie and Freddie fulfilled an important mission. The problem, to my way of thinking, wasn't the mission or even the implied government intervention in capital markets. The problem was runaway greed and the foolish belief that the party would never, ever, EVER end. It's a problem shared by virtually everyone, from the treasonous monsters currently occupying every federal government office, to the foul cretins in the executive suites (and formerly in the executive suites - yes, you, Uncle Angelo, and you too, Dave, you foul, soulless slime), right down to the cash-out-equity-tappin... hummer-driving, sybaritic suburbanites who couldn't bear the thought of setting aside a few bucks a month and waiting a year to "upgrade" your media rooms.

The only thing that's missing from America today is the courage to face ourselves and get to work solving the ONLY national security issue in front of us: debt and the necessity to take the pain of the great unwind. Unfortunately, because that courage is missing, we are all but unquestionably finished as a "superpower." This, by the way, is exactly how every other empire came crashing to the ground, and so in the final analysis it is really true what they say:

The only thing we learn from history is that we never learn anything from history.