Considering that Fannie and Freddie were intially created by the US government in order to foster a liquid mortgage market and enable average Joe to buy a home, it would be ridiculous for the same government to stand by and do nothing while these companies faltered and became impaired to continue to issue mortgage backed notes.
It's been a wild ride, and the panic has seemed ridiculous when the default rates on Fannie and Freddie mortgages are at only 0.8% in one case, and 1.2% in another. Yet the equity markets have become totally panicked on these companies, coming to believe that the Bush government would allow shareholder equity in these companies to be wiped out. There has been quite a little ideological war going on between the markets and the Bush goverment's desire to somehow distance themselves from the "implied" government backing of these agencies. This has resulted in the equity of these companies going into free fall.
The Bush government finally blinked.
Since Freddie needs to auction notes on Monday to continue it's role as a mortgage provider, the government had to at least provide some confidence that it would facilitate whatever was needed to allow these agencies to continue their traditional role.
Anything else would shut down the mortgage market far worse than the subprime fiasco ever did.
It's been yet another wild confidence game (in the literal sense).
It's probably true that there are things about the Fannie and Freddie structure that could be improved, and it does seem odd that they operate as private companies with shareholders getting the benefits of taking risks, yet the US taxpayer potentially ultimately liable for the downside, but the whole process to get to this point seemed like a pretty insane drama.
Audrey