Tuesday, December 16, 2008

 

Freeman Article on Fannie & Freddie Seizure Now Online

The December issue of the Freeman is up, and it has my article on the F&F seizure. I don't remember the exact date, but I think I submitted this piece in October. I confess that I was somewhat nervous to read it just now, because so much has changed since I wrote it. Fortunately, I only saw two statements that I now think are a bit off:

* "What should have been a large hit to real estate and a few institutional investors has now spread and is currently threatening the global financial system itself."

This shows how naively I bought the Paulson hype. Even though things were (and are) bad, I don't think the global financial system itself was at stake. And now the second claim I regret:

* "Although he is very smart and understands financial markets, Henry Paulson cannot centrally plan the mortgage market to improve on the spontaneous outcome of voluntary interactions among millions of professionals in the private sector."

I will leave it to the reader to guess with which portion of the above sentence I now disagree.



Comments:
Enjoyed your article in the Freeman. I think I spotted the error in your second quote . . . perhaps Paulson is smart but I think he has demonstrated he does not understand the financial markets.

I think one could also argue that the Bernard Madoff investment fraud is further evidence of our slow comfortable drift towards socialism. A common refrain I've read in the news about Madoff and his victims is that the SEC was warned, that the SEC investigated, that the regulators didn't do their jobs. I'm wondering, how do people who make millions of dollars hand over substantial sums of money to a person without understanding what that person is doing with their money (apparently he would not disclose his investment strategies to his investors). Perhaps they all were relying on the government to do their homework for them. I have seen interviews with some of the victims and virtually all of them have said something along the lines of (a) I didn't really understand how the investment scheme worked because Madoff said the information was confidential, and (b) how could the government let this happen. I wonder how many of these gullible investors were assuming he was safe because he made a lot of money and the government had already sniffed him out? My ultimate point is that the more the government interferes the less responsible people become because they assume the government is doing their job for them. This seems to be evident on a grand scale (Freddie and Fannie Mae) and on a smaller scale (the Madoff scandal and others like it).
 
Right, the existence of the SEC makes investment fraud more likely, because it lulls people into a false sense of security while the SEC itself is corrupt / incompetent / subject to political objectives.
 
Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]





<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Subscribe to Posts [Atom]