There is a huge difference between poor and insolvent

Sir in “The year the god of finance failed” December 27 you mention as an example of government patronage “the effort to promote home ownership among the insolvent.” That is plainly wrong. Too much importance has indeed been assigned to home-ownership, in general, like the tax deductibility of interest paid on mortgages; and much of those efforts have been destined to help the poor, but no one has on purpose given assistance to the insolvent.

There is a branch of liberal radicalism on the web and that in their opposition to any sort of government intervention try to place the responsibility for this crisis fully on the shoulders of Fannie Mae and alike. The real truth is though that more than loans to insolvent borrowers most of the lousily awarded mortgages to the subprime sector were part of the production of attractive alternatives to investors that capitalized on too easily obtainable triple-A ratings.