U.S. industry requires access to places that the airlines do not serve and do not want to serve, since their business model is aimed at capturing the high-load factors that exist for travel between hub cities.
That hybrid model granted the GSEs access to cheap funding and gave them the incentive to load their retained portfolios with subprime mortgages whilst maintaining capital levels scanty enough to make investment banks blush.
Veteran fund picker Sheldon Jacobs, editor of the No-Load Fund Investor, is delighted with the boost his favorite international equity fund gave his model portfolios last month: Longleaf Partners International ( LLINX) was up 14.2% in April.