...Richard Green, Ph.D., director of the University of Southern California's Lusk Center for Real Estate (who once worked at Freddie Mac for a year), says the long-term lesson of the current housing crisis is that we really need these institutions, especially at times like this...
...Green points out that Fannie was, in fact, a government agency for 30 years, backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government until it was privatized in 1968 by the Johnson Administration. "We've gone through periods like this before," Green says. "In the early 1980s recession, credit losses were even higher, so I think both Fannie and Freddie will survive. Raising their capital limits makes sense. We now know they need more capital to withstand stress."...
