Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac US and Northern Rock UK

The U.S. Treasury recently sought and was granted an unlimited credit line for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with the authority to buy their stock, effectively nationalizing them; but this could mean $5 trillion more in liabilities for the federal government, causing it to lose its own triple-A rating. What to do? There is a solution that would salvage the mortgage giants and cost the taxpayers nothing . . .

The article can be found in three equally interesting contexts on the web.

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/take_a_load_off_fannie.php

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Take-a-Load-Off-Fannie-Ba-by-Ellen-Brown-080905-667.html

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10082

From the UK, it cites Micheal Meacher MP: In the August 8 London Tribune, British MP Michael Meacher proposed this alternative for Northern Rock, a major British bank that was recently nationalized after becoming insolvent.  He wrote: “When the banks have failed the public interest so badly and still even now continue to pursue so single-mindedly their commitment to privatise their gains whilst socialising their losses, would not a publicly owned bank be the most effective way of changing the current corrosive financial culture of short-termism, lower investment, house price inflation, and insider enrichment at the expense of systemic fragility for everyone else? Perhaps we should not return Northern Rock to the private sector after all.”

The whole article A Bank too Far? is also on Michael Meacher MP’s blog. Above all, it spells out the failure of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) as the whole idea of self-regulation by New Labour.