For many years, these institutions prudently pursued their core mission of enhancing the availability of credit for housing. Beginning in the early 1980s, Fannie and Freddie helped to facilitate the development of the securitization market for home mortgages. They purchased and bundled mortgage loans, and sold the resulting mortgage-backed securities (MBS) to investors.
Perhaps more to the point, I think that globalization is here to stay and that further globalization is inevitable. Today, I want to review where we are in the process of globalizing product markets and the factors of production - capital and labor. I also want to speculate about some implications of globalization for policymakers.