Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Tottering?

The subprime crisis was one thing, hammering the worst speculators hardest, but Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are another - the meat and potatoes of the economy. If they go 'tits up' (as the British like to say) then we are toast:

The well-being of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is crucial because they hold or guarantee about $5 trillion worth of mortgages — roughly half the $9.5 trillion debt of the United States. Their troubles are just the latest depressing turn in a year-old credit crisis that shows no sign of ending, disappointing some stock traders who thought just months ago that the worst was perhaps over.

Little beads of sweat are forming everywhere. The Bush Administration and its cronies have been progressively looting the economy, with the full expectation that economic collapse, damage repair, and the required tax increases would be undertaken by a successor Democratic Administration (onto which the tax-increase blame could be laid). But despite Ben Bernanke's best efforts to kick the can down the road into the next Administration, the collapse may be coming now, and the Government just doesn't have enough money to save the day without a massive, massive tax increase.

I just love this bone-headed assessment. Once everyone's friends, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are now seen as tar babies:

A rescue shouldn't be an option, said Representative Jeb Hensarling, chairman of the fiscally conservative Republican Study Committee.

``The government should not be supporting the system as is,'' said Hensarling, of Texas. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are a ``government-sanctioned duopoly'' that ``no longer helps the market in the way that it once did'' while posing ``a huge systemic risk'' to the economy.