Academic

POLITICO: Was Freddie Pressured to Toe Obama Line? ?Both the Washington Post and Wall Street Journ?

By Glenn Reynolds

POLITICO: Was Freddie Pressured to Toe Obama Line? “Both the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal are reporting that Freddie Mac’s Chief Financial Officer, David Kellermann, who was found dead Wednesday in an apparent suicide, was involved in recent months in a heated dispute with Freddie’s regulator over how to reflect costs of President Obama’s anti-foreclosure program. . . . While the Obama administration might not want to have the pricetag for its foreclosure efforts look too big, the reason regulators may have pressured Fannie to understate the cost of the program is pretty simple: both Obama and Geithner said publicly that it wouldn’t have a material financial impact on Fannie or Freddie.”

Via Mickey Kaus, who comments: “Why would Obama and Geithner make such an estimate? Because they were publicly buying into the Juiceboxy free-lunchish, counterintuitive notion that if only lenders were made to offer more lenient terms to homebuyers, the lenders would make more money!”

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on April 23, 2009 (boomark / email).