Fannie and Freddie: Socialist from the Start

When the Cato Institute was founded in 1977 one of the first things the board of directors did was set a policy that we would not accept government funding. A simple libertarian principle, really, that money forcibly extracted from people who do not agree with our approach to public policy should not have to fund it. For 32 years, that has been our policy. In 1995 I received a letter from John Buckley, a v.p. for communications at Fannie Mae informing me of the good news that Cato was going to receive a $100,000 grant from his institution. I wrote back, Thanks, but no thanks, we have a policy against receiving money from government institutions like Fannie Mae. Boy, did I ever get a nasty letter back from Buckley stating that in no way was Fannie Mae a government entity.

The surprise GOP landslide in 1994 had apparently scared the hell out of the overpaid bureaucrats at Fannie Mae and they had decided to start funding market-oriented groups as opposed to the regulatory-oriented groups they had favored for all of their existence. Their judgment about what the new GOP majority would do turned out to be as flawed as their judgment about subprime mortgages. Anyway, if you ever wondered why Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have over 11,000 employees and $5 trillion in mortgages, it is because of the implicit (now explicit) federal guarantee. That guarantee sucked in money that in a free market would have gone to truly private firms. It led to the enormous salaries (and then consulting gigs) and the sloppy attention to whether or not loans could be repaid. So when I hear talking heads on TV this morning claiming socialism is alive and well in America by virtue of the federal takeover of Fannie and Freddie, I think, please, Fannie and Freddie have always been socialist institutions. This is not a market failure as so many are now claiming. It is a government failure, pure and simple.

I am proud that Cato rejected that $100,000 grant.