This bit was great "Our political leadership is proposing that we abolish Fannie and Freddie for the sins of the banks and the mortgage lenders, and then hand over the keys to these same architects of the mortgage disaster that brought us to the brink of financial collapse.  We are still healing and these are serious people proposing that we again legislate our way to mortgage prosperity, using no more common sense than that which got us into this mess.  What could go wrong?"

If you don't consider another classic 'pump and dump' on real estate to be a problem then nothing could go wrong... Hold the price up, sell, short the market. It would be profitable and in a market as large as real estate who has the capital to stave off that scenario when it is the most profitable course. Of course the most natural course of the market is the most profitable.

But hey I guess a real estate correction isn't the end of the world. I would have preferred if Fannie and Freddie just stayed in operation indefinitely and got sized down and liquidated assets as part of its' future plan of operations. Then the only considerable effect would ultimately be real estate becoming privatized very gradually, and the taxpayers seeing significant long-term returns on their investment into Fannie and Freddie. I don't like seeing the government auction off our assets like that for the profit of the same types that got us into this mess in the first place. Hope it doesn't happen. But then again Obama and the rest could know more than me and are doing this for more than their pure profit motive. But I doubt it.