, Columnist
Don’t Kill Fannie and Freddie
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Five years after they were rescued with taxpayer money, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are thriving.
The two giant providers of cash for mortgages now back almost 9 out of 10 home loans. Fannie, founded during the New Deal as a federal agency and then converted into a shareholder-owned government-sponsored enterprise in 1968, had its most profitable year in 2012. Together, the entities paid the U.S. Treasury $66.3 billion in dividends on July 1 -- a sum that extended the debt-ceiling deadline by a month.