Rich Blake, blogging at the hedge-fund-oriented Hedgeworld, begins a critique of Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac with a meditation on the repairs he has to do on his Big Indian cabin:
I own a tiny, cottage-style house in Ulster County, New York, in a valley hamlet called Big Indian, not far from Woodstock. It’s not much, but it’s a terrific spot, in the heart of the Catskill Mountains. There’s a creek in the back. That, the mountain air and a fire-engine red Coleman cooler filled to capacity with Budweiser longnecks on ice — there’s really not much more I need. Every time my girlfriend Meryl and I head up there, which is every weekend or so in the summer, some new project awaits me: A tree limb has smashed a deck railing; the local black bear has destroyed my fence or ripped apart the peach tree; the roof has sprung a mysterious leak, or carpenter ants have staged a reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg in my attic.
My handyman, John Spriggs, has a saying whenever he sees me become hesitant about going the extra distance on a proposed remedy. He screeches: “Hey, you fix problems!” (Which usually means what might have been a few hours work suddenly turns into a three-part episode of “This Old House.”)
Then Blake jumps into a call for abolishing Fanny and Freddie. The tie-in to hedge funds -- or to the housing market -- here is a little thin. But he eventually brings it back to Big Indian, sort of:
Turn the game board over. Let the houses and hotels fall where they may. If the housing market caves in, that’s strong, tough, badly needed medicine.
And if the roof springs a leak, I have a handy man I can recommend.
