Editorial Comment

Somehow, it seems, Wall Street and the national home mortgage business, a serious proposition for people who are working every day to pay the notes, has come to sound like a disorganized high school sock hop--if you remember those; maybe they call them raves nowadays; we're not up on the lingo which changes by the day--with flitty characters named Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac doing a nasty Charleston under the strobe lights while their chaperones sip gin in the corner. Who can take that seriously?

First off, who is this guy Freddie Mac, and his cousin Fannie Mae, who are causing the trouble? We used to know them as Federal Home Mortgage Corporation, and Federal National Mortgage Association. FHMC. FNMA. Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae. Get it?

One recalls the scene in The Godfather II, when aging mobster Hyman Roth is treated for what is apparently kidney stones by a Spanish speaking doctor in Havana while waiting arrival of Michael Corleone's two million bucks to seal a partnership in mob-run casinos in pre-Castro Cuba. He waves off the local physician and orders his assistant, "Get my doctor from Miami. I don't trust a doctor who can't speak English."

We'd feel the situation with the home mortgage crises were serious if the agencies were called by more "official" sounding names. Fannie Mae? Freddie Mac? This could be someone who snitched their tickets to the Sigma Nu pledge party.

We would feel better about it if U.S. Government--that would be "us," "the taxpayers," who are going to underwrite "Fannie Mae" and "Freddie Mac" against their losses on tons and tons of funny mortgages that are going "pop" like balloons in the summer sunshine, they and the news reporters would not make it sound like we're bailing out a couple of fun-loving school kids who just can't make it on their allowance and ran up the credit cards beyond the limit.

Why can't we speak English?

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