In an email (which she gave me permission to post), she writes,

So first of all, thank you for your kind words about All the Devils. I’ve always been a fan of your work, and I wholeheartedly second the title of your blog! Secondly, I’m always fine with criticism of my work and disagreement with any interpretation I’ve made. In particular, the GSEs are a nuanced, difficult subject, and frankly, I learn new things all the time. I am always willing to change my mind if someone shows me that I’m wrong.

What I’m not ok with is mischaracterizations of my work, whether deliberate or because you didn’t actually read most of the book [her newest book, Shaky Ground]. My main reason for writing is that you say I dismiss Ed DeMarco as a free market ideologue. That is exactly the opposite of what I actually wrote, which is that you cannot dismiss him as just that! I think Ed is a good man who did the best job he could and held true to his beliefs – saving taxpayers money – under very difficult circumstances. I don’t want people reading your review to think I impugned someone’s character when in fact, I did the opposite. It’s really unfair of you.

You are intellectually dishonest about some other points as well, but frankly, everyone is intellectually dishonest about the GSEs, so I won’t bother with most of it. But since I’m writing, I’m going to point another one out.

You also say that the shareholders made a political bet, which they lost, fair and square. There are many different types of shareholders, but as I detail (gory detail – it’s hard to miss!) a number of them made a purely financial bet, and totally missed the poisonous politics. They did loan level analysis and saw that the GSEs were going to become profitable again. Their bet was not that they could buy special favors, but precisely the opposite: that the government would treat Fannie and Freddie as normal companies – ie, like AIG, like Chrysler, like the big banks. Which, not incidentally, is what Jim Lockhart said would happen at the time of conservatorship. And the government set up this situation by leaving the common and preferred shares outstanding. You can blame the investors for being politically naive, but I don’t see how you can fail to acknowledge that there’s a lot of blame to go around here. (It might be a fair point to say that the GSEs are only profitable again because of government support. But then, you’d have to say the same thing about the big banks. In fact, you’d have to say the same thing about our whole stock market, which is supported by the Fed! Etc, etc. )

I agree with your point about there being a powerful case to be made against the government caving into the housing lobby. Perhaps I do give in too easily to what I view as the political reality. That said, the history of the private market financing residential real estate is not a pretty one either! Look back to the booms and busts in the 1800s and the spectacular default rates in the Great Depression. I also would contest the idea that there is such a thing today as a private sector, as pertains to the mortgage market. If the big banks finance the mortgage market, they too will be GSEs, if they aren’t already. But on this, there is much grist for debate, and criticism is fair.

Anyway, the tag line on your blog, “taking the most charitable view of those who disagree,” is so important. Live up to it! Don’t set up straw men so that you can knock me down.

My remarks:

1. I am glad that she respects Ed DeMarco, and I am sorry that I interpreted her as siding with his opponents.

2. She and I will have to agree to disagree about the hedge fund investors in Freddie and Fannie stock. I see no role for financial calculation, or “loan-level analysis.” Instead, it would have been obvious that the GSEs could be restored to profitability if you kept them going long enough using Treasury funds to borrow while having the entire mortgage market to themselves. The wild, speculative bet was that in the meantime there would be no reform of the housing finance system and that politicians would then decide to return Freddie and Fannie to the status quo prior to 2008. However, neither the Bush Administration nor the Obama Administration indicated any intent to do that. If you bought GSE stock for pennies in 2009 or 2010, you were making a bet that could pay off spectacularly, but only if Congress and the Administration were to do something very different from what they were saying.

In dealing with the crisis, the only purist, follow-the-law approach would have been to put the firms (including big banks) through bankruptcy. I would have preferred that, although I understand the fears that policy makers had about such a process. In my view, the next best alternative would have been to nationalize the GSEs and the failed banks, on the grounds that taxpayers were on the hook for the losses of those firms. Then the government would gradually wind these firms down. Instead, the policy makers chose bailouts, which necessarily involved arbitrary treatment of stakeholders. I do not think that any of those stakeholders has a compelling legal complaint at this point, because the rule of law went out the window with TARP and the bailouts.

Just the other day, some bloggers at the New York Fed wrote,

our view is that an optimal intervention into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would have involved the following elements:

The firms would be able to continue their core securitization function as going concerns, supporting the supply of mortgage credit.

The firms would continue to honor their debt and mortgage-backed securities obligations.

The value of the common and preferred equity in the two firms would be extinguished, reflecting their insolvent financial position.

Note that last sentence.

3. For writing my earlier post, I have been subjected to vicious, ad hominem attacks from former members of the Fannie Mae lobbying arm. If nothing else were to convince me that restoring the status quo for the GSE’s is a bad idea, then these crude, juvenile social media posts would suffice. Perhaps government backing for housing finance is inevitable in America. But at least let us hope that the institutions that receive such support do not replicate Fannie Mae’s aggressive and unprincipled lobbying machine.

In an opinion piece in today’s WaPo, McLean dismisses this lobbying with an “everybody does it” line.

One legitimate complaint about the old Fannie and Freddie was the way they garnered political clout through their promotion of homeownership. In their heyday, it was immense and ugly. (“Fannie has this grandmotherly image, but they will castrate you, decapitate you, tie you up, and throw you in the Potomac,” a congressional source told the International Economy in the late 1990s. “They are absolutely ruthless.” That would pale next to the political clout of a big bank that also controlled the mortgage market, and whatever evils grew out of the GSEs’ need to please politicians, there could be worse. Imagine the conversation in a back room between the politicians and the bank executives, where they agree that if the bank will loosen up credit in their states, the politicians will go easy on, say, derivatives regulation. It almost makes the old Fannie and Freddie look pure.

No it doesn’t. And the rest of her piece consists of cheerleading for housing finance subsidies, which is exactly what makes her new book such a disappointment.