How Fannie and Freddie work

Last week, President Donald Trump announced a pair of actions to address rising homeownership costs. On January 8, the president directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — government-sponsored mortgage-finance companies — to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds to bring down mortgage rates. On January 7, Trump said he was “taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes” and would ask Congress to codify those rules. The president said he will share more details about his housing affordability plans in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, next week. 

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The roots of travel nightmares.

If you’ve flown commercially in the past decade, you’ve probably noticed an uptick in irritants — delays, cancellations, shrinking seats, and, broadly, a system that seems built to exhaust customers rather than help them. In our latest YouTube video, we break down the source of these problems, why they’re so persistent, and why recent efforts to solve them have failed. It’s one of our most in-depth investigations yet, and we’d love for you to check it out.

https://youtu.be/cs242CC8rCc?si=kuG3rlWRyS33RT-A

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You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.

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Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.

This podcast was written by: Ari Weitzman and audio edited and mixed by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.

Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead.

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