Brad Miller's piece on mortgage finance ("Wayback Machine for Housing Finance Reform") linked in today's Economics Daily Digest is correct about Fannie's and Freddie's role in supporting a robust market for home lending. Yet it erases the larger story of federal financial policy and its legacy, which is equally important for understanding today's homeownership crisis. Fannie did not create that market by itself; it worked in tandem with FHA and FHLLB and VA programs to promote both the primary and secondary markets. Meanwhile--and here's the big omission--those same programs denied access to homeownership to generations of minorities and single women. Until 1968 they systematically denied mortgage credit to these populations; the racial proscriptions were outlined explicitly in the federal underwriting manuals for the private sector. And when minorities and single women were welcomed into the market, especially since the 1990s, they entered on comparatively expensive and risky terms, which helps explain why these same groups are overrepresented in the populations that have defaulted or remain "under water." This history is very well documented, and it is frustrating to see well-meaning commentators repeatedly ignore it. In short, yes, we need a government role in supporting and shaping the market for and supply of decent housing. But we don't need to blindly invoke "glory days" that didn't happen.