Can Fannie and Freddie fix the mortgage crisis?

Rudyard Kipling, the poet of Britain's high imperial age, once wrote of the hypocrisy of a country that often spurned its soldiers, or Tommies, in times of peace and then embraced them when there was a war to fight and win. He said:

"Oh, it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' Tommy go away; But it's 'Thank you Mr Atkins,' when the band begins to play"

Management at the two government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac might sympathise with Kipling's soldiers. After years in the

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