Let’s face it: it’s time to pull the plug on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The mortgage giants are already on life support, courtesy of the taxpayers. The New York Stock Exchange threatened to delist them last week after their stock fell to less than a dollar a share. Taxpayers are inheriting their $6.8 trillion debt – equivalent to two-thirds of the entire national debt – and it would require massive transfusions of public funds to keep these creaky New Deal relics alive.

Like all government programs, Fannie and Freddie – which were created to help Americans with limited financial means buy homes – seemed like a good idea at the time. But the private-gain, public-risk model used by these quasi-governmental entities has proven to be a spectacular failure. Millions of people they “helped” have either lost their homes to foreclosure or watched the value of their property precipitously decline.

After the federal government seized the mortgage giants this summer, it was discovered that, unlike the auto industry, they had few real assets left to save. So there’s no rational reason left to resuscitate companies that not only decimated the housing market, but were instrumental in triggering an international credit crisis.