Government housing policies and the toxic mortgages they spawned were the sine qua non of the financial crisis.

Efforts to blame the banks for the financial crisis are failing because they are not supported by data. The key fact is that, by 2008, before the crisis, half of the 54 million mortgages in the U.S. financial system were subprime and other low-quality mortgages.

In 2011, the Government Mortgage Complex accounted for 88 percent of all first-mortgage originations in the United States, with the government also controlling an estimated 90 percent of the student loan market. The government’s growing dominance in the home mortgage and student loan categories is cause for concern, posing a threat to private investors, borrowers, and taxpayers.

Few recognize just how troubled this government agency really is. When measured against the accounting system used by private mortgage insurers, the FHA is deeply insolvent, with a capital shortfall of tens of billions of dollars. If it were a private firm, state regulators would immediately shut it down. 

Discolsures contained in SEC complaints further validate the necessity to look behind Fannie and Freddie's characterization of subprime loans.  

We should aim in the long term for a housing finance sector which is principally a robust private market, and one in which you can be either a private company, or you can be a government agency, but you can't be both.

Alex Pollock gives the House Financial Services Committee 12 different solutions and ideas for moving forward and dealing with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.