ElfDude wrote: Show me how tax cuts caused Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to explode and consequently injure so many near to them.
I can't show you this, but I can comment on injury Fannie and Freddie have done.
My step-dad is filing for bankruptcy. Again.
He and my mom bought a house together and they were doing okay until he, again, ran his credit cards up. They sat down, talked about it, and decided to take out an equity loan on their home, pay off the credit cards, and quit running the cards up past what they could pay off each month.
Well, it didn't quite work out that way. Dad ran his credit cards up to the limit and then started taking credit cards out in my mom's name for himself to use. When Mom found out, she blew a fuse! He quit taking out new cards in her name and she worked hard at paying them down. Then she died, with some debt still on her cards, and now my Dad no longer gets the $500 a month from my mom that she had been giving him toward the mortgage.
So, then Dad has his bills and her bills and can't make it. He's filing for bankruptcy. He's pretty pleased because the costs are the same as when he filed 15 years ago, though.
But, once he goes bankrupt, he's not out of the woods. Not by any means. See, he's not putting the mortgages on the bankruptcy because he wants to stay in the house and not have to move in with one of us kids. He will have, after he pays the bill from dear Freddie each month $600 left. That's $600 for food, lights, water, trash, phone, insurance, et cetera for a whole month.
Now, I'm not saying my folks did right here. They shouldn't have built up so much debt or taken out loans that came so close to what they could afford, especially when they were both living with terminal diseases and the chances of one or both of them dying in 5 years was so high.
But Freddie should not have loaned them the money, either. My Dad is not the only American sitting at home today wondering how he is going to make it whose poor spending habits were enabled by our own government.