Freddie and Fannie

We taxpayers are gonna take a solid hit on this one. It's probably necessary, Fannie and Freddie bonds were sold all over the world and were regarded as good as US treasuries. If we default on the Fannie/Freddie bonds, it will weaken the credit of the United States, making it much more expensive, maybe impossible, to sell the bonds that keep the US government solvent. Right now the US enjoys the reputation of the safest haven for money on the planet. Anyone can invest in the US and not get ripped off, not get nationalized, and not get inflated to death. Even the Chinese, who don't like us very much, buy our T-bills 'cause they are safe. If the Americans welsh on the $5 trillion worth of Fannie/Freddie bonds, the rest of the world will not soon forget. And the world wide river of money flowing into the US will dry up. So the treasury had to step in.
Big question, what to do next? Do we really need Fannie and Freddie to finance houses? Up till the 1980's banks financed mortages from deposits. To get more deposits, the banks used to pay real interest on savings accounts. Today the banks pay depositors dirt, and prefer to raise money by selling bonds on Wall St bearing a hellova lot more interest than they will pay a depositor. Or, they sell the mortgage outright to Fannie, Freddie, or a gullable Wall St brokerage house like Bear Stearns. Trouble with the "sell the mortgage" plan, is that once sold, the mortgage issuer is off the hook. Assuming enough gullable buyers, the issuers will write terrible mortgages and sell them off for good money. That is the cause of the sub prime catastrophy.
So where do we go now? I think we ought to wind down Fannie and Freddie, over a ten year period. Have them buy ten percent fewer mortages each year until in 2018 they close their doors for good. Prohibit them from dabbling in the sub prime swamp. Prohibit them from lobbying Congress and from hiring ex politicians.