Democrat says abolish Freddie, Fannie-FOXBy JoAnne Allen
By JoAnne Allen – Washington (Reuters) – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be abolished rather than reformed as part of the Obama administration’s planned overhaul of the government’s role in housing finance, Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services committee, said on Tuesday.
“They should be abolished,” Frank said in an interview on Fox Business, when asked whether the mortgage giants should be elements in housing market reform. “They only question is what do you put in their place,” Frank said.
The Federal Housing Administration should be fully self-financing and Freddie and Fannie should be replaced with a new mechanism to help subsidize housing, Frank said in the interview.
“There is no more hybrid private-public,” the Massachusetts Democrat suggested. “If we want to subsidize housing then we could do it upfront and let the budget be clear about that.”
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were government-sponsored enterprises, privately owned companies supported by the government, until the Bush administration took control of the companies in 2008 to save them from collapse. Read the full story here.