Contributed by: filbert Tuesday, September 09 2008 @ 03:41 PM CST
Lyndon Johnson partially privatized the FNMA in 1968, to take it “off the budget.” I say “partially” because although the corporation was divorced from direct public control, it was still implicitly backed by the Federal Treasury, yet FNMA as well as it’s partner in white-collar crime, Freddie Mac, were not required to make the same kind of public accounting records that all truly private corporations must do.
FNMA took 70 years to fail, with the result that almost all of the American mortgage industry is practically nationalized.
Nationalized. Brought under government control.
So, remember the Fannie, when talking about Social Security, or nationalized health care. The clock is ticking on Social Security. Can we afford to bail out that New Deal mistake, too? Can we afford to make another New Deal-class mistake with one-sixth of the nation’s economy–health care?
I don’t think so.
It isn’t privatizing Social Security, or radical reform of Medicare which should be off the table–it’s allowing the Federal Government to control even more of the nation’s retirement or health care systems than they already do.
It is past time to start phasing out New Deal, command-economy policies and programs, and start implementing 21st-Century, Information-Age, market-oriented policies and programs instead.