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.
