A recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, buried by the brouhaha surrounding the election and the Libya cover-up, indicates that the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is in profound financial trouble. Indeed, it seems to be following its siblings Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae into the swamps.
The FHA has been around for nearly 80 years, and gives taxpayer backing to loans for homebuyers who put as little as 3.5% down. But more recently, the FHA has been used to reinflate the housing market by allowing lots of mortgages to be written. It now guarantees a staggering $1.1 trillion in loans.
The FHA is supposed to use its reserves to cover losses of the loans that go bad. As late as last year, it was estimated that after covering losses, the FHA would have $2.6 billion left in reserves. But, especially because of dicey loans issued between 2007 and 2009, the FHA is projected to lose $46.7 billion this year. That exceeds the $30.4 billion in reserves. The $16.3 billion deficit will almost certainly have to be covered by tax dollars from the budget. This is on top of the $137 billion already ripped off from taxpayers to cover the rescue of those Twin Towers of Corruption, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
In fact, independent housing economist Thomas Lawlar states bluntly that “if [the FHA] were a private company, it would be declared insolvent and probably put under receivership like Fannie and Freddie.”
There is no doubt even more of this to come. The federal housing agencies (FHA, Freddie, Fannie, and lesser ones such as the VA) now back 90% of all new home loans, and the Fed continues to pump out the money ceaselessly. God help us if there is another major “correction” in the housing market.
In a better world, we would amend the Constitution to require that after ten more years (say), the federal government will have ended all housing subsidy programs and be permanently banned from any involvement in the housing market from that point on.
But this is far from a better world.
