Congratulations, or perhaps condolences, fellow taxpayers. On Sunday we all became mortgage bankers.

Plunging confidence in the housing and financial markets forced the federal government to seize control of its quasipublic mortgage agencies, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The takeover will keep them from going under and pulling much of the financial world down with them.

Taxpayers assume all the risks to reassure the world that the United States remains a safe place to invest. The alternative is unthinkable. ...

A major flaw in the model was the accurate assumption that the companies that handled half the nation's mortgages were too big to be allowed to fail. The implied federal guarantee led to risky innovations. Both stockholders and taxpayers went along, not knowing that the roof was about to fall.

James B. Lockhart, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, now in charge of Freddie and Fannie, says the executives running the mortgage giants "did not create the inherent conflict and flawed business model embedded in the enterprises' structure."

Maybe not, but no one can say they did a good job of protecting either their stockholders or the public interest. ...

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson promises a new philosophy. The companies "will no longer be managed with a strategy to maximize common shareholder returns."

That's no big surprise. The new shareholders are no one important, just common taxpayers.

(The Tampa (Fla.) Tribune)