Surprize surprize. Even though a great deal has been done to ensure that the Great Depression won't happen again (with new rules and mandated capital reserves), one aspect of the fix for that fiasco still remains. The mortgage bonds business that now aggregates most home loans is in the guaranteed hands of the United States Government. That is to say that virtually all of these bonds are now backed by the U.S. taxpayer; a service that is provided without fees being charged or, more importantly, without any reserve capitalization to have on hand to cushion possible failure events. Congress, it seems, in setting us up as the fail safe stop gap against failure, at the height of the 2008 panic, hasn't gotten around to putting things back to a true, competitive, normal.
To say that this is not good is like saying Congress may tend to gridlock in the years to come. But that is representational government now in the age of electrically mutated Capitalism. The next failure to get them to actually do something about it might make 2008 look like a walk in the park; if for no other reason than the pressures massing in other social/economic fault lines would be triggered in a cascade event.
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