On Sunday, September 7, the United States government took control of more than half the U.S. mortgage market, through its seizure–and that is the word used in mainstream press accounts–of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two colossal government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), hybrid organizations owned by private individuals yet created by the government. The likes of this and other recent actions taken by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have not been seen since the 1930s. Will the GSE takeover someday be viewed as a decisive step in bringing state socialism to the United States? More . . . ^[1]

–A NEW article by Robert P. Murphy