The New York Times has an interview with Donald P. Cogsville, "chief executive of the Cogsville Group, a private equity firm that last week won a bid to buy foreclosed homes through a Fannie Mae pilot program." From the interview:
Q. How much of your business is tied to the government?
A. Well, right now a fair amount. From the very beginning our strategy has been that the government is going to be somewhat monolithic in its ability to actually be at the epicenter of the problem, and so our ability to partner with the federal government was part of the strategy. We partnered with the F.D.I.C. and we now pivot over to Fannie and Freddie, where the residential crisis is happening in more of an acute way, and HUD and F.H.A.
It's probably for the best to get these homes into private hands and off the government's hands, but it's nonetheless striking how much of the "private" economy these days revolves, in one way or another, in being able to "partner" with the government.