This morning's Wall Street Journal reprints a blog post by Eliot University Professor (and former University president) Lawrence H. Summers. Summers, who served as Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001, writes that a noble principle—opening up home ownership to a broader swath of the American people—underlay the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but that the regulatory framework and the public were all too willing to look the other way precisely because the entities were founded on a noble principle.
Non-Wall Street Journal subscribers can find the original post here.
More of Summers's thoughts on the U.S. economy will appear in the September-October issue of Harvard Magazine.
