Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed mortgage lenders that helped fuel the housing crisis, will cost taxpayers at least $400 billion. Yay... happy new year!

Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Taxpayer losses from supporting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will top $400 billion, according to Peter Wallison, a former general counsel at the Treasury who is now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

“The situation is they are losing gobs of money, up to $400 billion in mortgages,” Wallison said in a Bloomberg Television interview. The Treasury Department recognized last week that losses will be more than $400 billion when it raised its limit on federal support for the two government-sponsored enterprises, he said.

The U.S. seized the two mortgage financiers in 2008 as the government struggled to prevent a meltdown of the financial system. The debt of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks grew an average of $184 billion annually from 1998 to 2008, helping fuel a bubble that drove home prices up by 107 percent between 2000 and mid-2006, according to the S&P/Case- Shiller home-price index.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac... end them, don't mend them. Why do we need them anyway? During the last 3-4 years, we've seen firsthand what happens when companies lend money to "homeowners" who can't afford to pay it back -- they default or simply walk away because they have nothing to lose. Interest only, no income verification loans with no money down is a recipe for a housing crisis and a global financial meltdown.

We need responsible legislators who will end programs like these, but instead, we have Democrats who will only seek to make them larger.

From Mark Steyn at The Corner...

This line from Representative Cantor caught my eye:

You can't even dignify this squalid racket as bribery: If I try to buy a cop, I have to use my own money. But, when Harry Reid buys a senator, he uses my money, too. It doesn't "border on immoral": It drives straight through the frontier post and heads for the dark heartland of immoral.

They're allocating taxpayer dollars as if those dollars belonged to the senators. It borders on immoral. Just look at the way Senator Landrieu put her vote up for sale. Senator Nelson did the same.

Disgusting. One of my biggest complaints about Democrats is their belief that taxpayer dollars belong to them rather than to us. It's our money and it shouldn't be wasted and it definitely should not be used to bribe elected representatives.

Hmm... it's obvious that someone didn't get the memo - red ink harms self esteem.