It’s been eight years since the sub-prime mortgage shutdown in 2007. Overall, the market seems to be doing fairly well, and while the U.S. economy may still not be firing on all cylinders, it’s certainly pointed in the right direction. But this belies a dirty little secret: the mortgage industry is still backed by the tax payer. There has been no meaningful injection of capital from private markets back into mortgages, and while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac paid back the treasury department (i.e., us, the taxpayers) a little over a year ago, they’re currently sitting on precious little capital to back any losses on the $5 trillion on their balance sheets.
