The Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) was established by Congress in 1938 to make housing more affordable by creating a secondary mortgage market and helping homeowners with refinancing. A government-sponsored enterprise, Fannie Mae is a federally chartered private corporation. In the sub-prime mortgage crisis of the first decade of the 2000s, Fannie Mae (with Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation) suffered major losses, which contributed to the ensuing recession. The...