Is William Poole kidding?

He gets some things right in his op-ed piece in today's New York Times. Fannie and Freddie should have higher capital requirements and they should stop lobbying. Beyond this, I think something should be done about executive compensation for senior management at both institutions. But when Poole says:

In fact, there has already been a test case for how the mortgage market would function without Fannie and Freddie. After an accounting scandal in 2005, regulators severely constrained their activities. The nation’s total residential mortgage debt outstanding rose by $1.176 trillion in that year, even though Fannie’s and Freddie’s stakes rose by only $169 billion, just 14.4 percent of the total. In essence, the market barely noticed that the two agencies’ private competitors were providing 85 percent of the increase in mortgage debt in 2005.

The market barely noticed???? I think we have been noticing quite a lot about mortgages generated in the "pure" private market over the past 18 months or so. And of course, the non-conforming (i.e., private) market for 30-year fixed rate mortgages is, shall we say, problematic at the moment.