Take the FHA. It tripled its loan portfolio to $1 trillion after the private mortgage market collapsed, exactly as it was created to do during the Depression, and its defenders have argued that its $1.7 billion Treasury bailout was a tiny price for taxpayers to pay to keep credit flowing during another epic housing crisis. But that well-publicized $1.7 billion figure ignored tens of billions of additional dollars in unpublicized budget re-estimates after FHA mortgage losses repeatedly turned out worse than expected. Continue reading Even after the spike in government credit and defaults during the financial meltdown and subsequent recession, U