The Weight

Barry Ritholtz has a gem of a blog about financial stuff here. Monday, he linked to a cogent video about our major mortgage corporations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which together hold about $15 trillion in mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. Fifteen thousand thousand thousand thousand dollars, that is. We're up to parsec numbers, folks. And the US gubment has had to announce recently they'll step in to make them solvent. This effectively adds the weight of their mortgage debt to the already astronomical obligations our country has amassed during the Bush years.

Guess who is going to pay that debt? Cindy McCain won't even be able to make an interest payment.

Under the current administration, gubmental oversight of the wheeling dealings at our two biggest gubment-sponsored enterprises (GSE's) has been completely absent. One assumes it has to do with some sort of laissez faire ideology, though a more cynical observer might be tempted to infer that gubment by anti-gubment millionaires leads to bad gubment. Them as want no control of financial activity is most likely to put folks without a clue in charge of the regulation process because they be ideologically indisposed to do the job to begin with. Carmen and the Devil really were walkin' side-by-side.

And ......... they put the load right on me. On you, too.