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358,000 on the bid. Someone unloading??
Shareholder board elect was dismissed in first hour of take over and replaced by gov hand pick prior to cship. Action was all over the news in addition to a gag order put in place.
Keep focused Or you will see and fell the Joebidenism. Lol
Since you are not a lawyer or any other form of authority on the subject , you and the other 2 omigoes could open yourself to legal action for misrepresentation to benefit yourself. If you make a statement that results in a loss that is dependent on your statement to act ( which by taunting or advising to get others to act ) , the financial crisis 2008 showed precendents against such conduct. Best of luck to you and the other 2 omigos.
A lot of things are said with open end interpretation, especially government, politicians, corporate America and Boy Scouts. You do not know until it happens , that is the nature of things.
I think fiduciary duty was discussed in the enbanc . How can you talk about the illegal NWS without including the subject of fudicary duty of the conservator ?
Do you know what you are talking about ? Maybe or MAYBE NOT!
A complete different environment from 4 years past.
Lumpina , agree that memo is general w/o any detail other than hud and treasury to report back after completing a proposal / recommendations with an undisclosed deadline. Talk about lot of hot air. If this is to stage the termination of the coming sweep, don’t understand how that happens when congress had to approve the $3 billion buffer. I am for it if that is the case , but I am not for being annoying to others as a fly on a pigs ass. Some on this board continue false chanting on every opportunity. We know who they might be and that is how they should be viewed. Hope your Kansas red slippers still shining !
Price fixing by banks on fnma bonds.
He has been here before. He is life long member of bash Plug. Put him on ignor. Has nothing to offer.
“ Report from
@EllieMaeInc #mortgage #volatlity #profits “
Now I am confused..... FnF not suppose to make profits for shareholders but Ellie Mae can make profits ?
That is Virgil L. Corker......not Robert Corker.
She sd “ common could ( not would) go to zero under right condition but it portray the gov as committing malicious act against the common but that is not what go;v wants to do. “
Read “jump start act”
That article is regurged from earlier time.
The c-ship was illegal. Until all documents and books available to us , we have hard time proving. In addition courts say case not ripe until warrants exercise . Now some say warrants not exercise but sold by the thief to the big boys that help bring about this chaos. How that exempts gov from any further lawsuits is beyond me. Like someone stealing your car and selling for their profit. If the gov thiefs do not pfully restore shareholders, they are still stealing but now include the buyer of stolen goods who knew the goods were stolen. Those buyers by buying are destroying value of current owners for buyers benefit.. gov thiefs need to compensate current shareholders full value before continue the harm . Legal battle not over.
“Of course, Treasury hasn’t made that decision yet – and may never. “
May or may not happen.
“ We continue to hear chatter in the market that Treasury is pondering hiring an advisor in the event of a stock sale. And who might that lucky firm be? One name that’s come up is Perella Weinberg Partners, which assisted the federal government when it decided to free Ally Financial from the shackles of Uncle Sam’s control. We’ve heard two other names as well… “
key word “pondering” and “in the event” says nothing.
“ In short: If you think a stock sale by Treasury won’t happen, think again. Investors in GSE common and junior preferred are talking it up big time. Then again, they stand to benefit greatly… “
Second sentence is his support ??/
Pudding is in the Books and documents being withheld. Release the Books and documents and we have our pudding.
The treasure Is the HO used , Service , Replacements. Those are the key drivers and it is showing up. Also those PPAs that expire and change from a credit to cash payment. Watch cash flow increase.
The rules for appointment were brought to attention before appointment. Otting is not illegal. The squirrels just pissed because they left out of process to control the process by their own evil actions to steal the nuts. Options were available. The squirrels just focus on option that stated “one of the deputies should be selected “ under certain conditions . Otting fit other conditions and appointed. The rules are stated in conservator rules for a temporary conservator. Democrats need to learn how to read. But we know they are just wanting to obstruct the process.
Preferred was not the issue. The poster stated Ackman was not dumb cause he chose FNMA over FMCC. Facts show he position the same percent in each at same time meaning he didn’t show preference. Dummness
Has nothing to do with his purchase choice. Just clairifing a misstatement of fact.
Plug Power CEO Andy Marsh plans to buy up to $30,000 of shares of the fuel cell manufacturer's stock in the next year.
On or around March 7, Marsh will adopt a stock trading plan to buy shares of Plug’s common stock, according to a company blog post. The announcement is keeping Marsh's promise to shareholders after a business update in early January.
Under the proposed plan, a broker will buy up to $30,000 of shares of the company’s common stock at market price with a maximum price per share of $10 between March 11, 2019 and March 6, 2020. The transactions will be reported to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The blog post said additional details will be provided in March.
Plug Power (Nasdaq: PLUG) makes fuel cells used to power forklifts in warehouses and distribution centers. Fuel cells are seen as an alternative to lead-acid batteries. The company has shipped more than 25,000 fuel cell units to dozens of customers including Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN), Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT) and Nike (NYSE: NKE).
Plug is one of the largest manufacturers in the area and is one of the area's few public companies, employing more than 600 engineers, researchers and technologists.
Marsh has spent the last few years mapping out what the future of Plug Power will look like: Expanding into on-road delivery vehicles, working more with the telecom industry, fueling autonomous vehicles and potential partnerships in China. Plug has been working with FedEx (NYSE: FDX), putting its technology into vans delivering packages to Albany area residents.
He is projecting revenues between $235 million and $245 million in 2019, and says the company is on track to turn a profit for the first time.
Marsh plans to host a live Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) Session next week on Tuesday, Feb. 5 at 2 p.m. The Q&A will give people the opportunity to ask questions on anything they want to know about Plug Power.
Plug Power's stock closed at $1.39 on Wednesday afternoon.
Ackman is position in both. Don’t think they said which was first. But you are correct to minimize this posters statement, it really does not matter which one is purchased.
Where is the link that Otting backtracking ???
Wrong, Epstein made that claim in his current article.
The Article:
The Fannie Freddie Document Treasure Trove
Richard Epstein
Contributor
The Libertarian
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July 19, 2017 marked the release of the first set of much-awaited government documents that addressed the government knew and when, before the implementation of its net worth sweep on August 17, 2012, which gave the government all profits from the operation of those two Government Sponsored Entities (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That deal was embodied in the Third Amendment to the original Senior Preferred Stock Purchase Agreements (SPSPAs) of September 2008. Analytically, these documents are irrelevant: the case against the government is air tight without them. Practically, these documents should transform all phases of this complex litigation. The best way to beat the government in litigation is to show its bad faith throughout. It is important to see why both the propositions are true, and how they impact on the ongoing litigation. I am offering this analysis, in my capacity as an advisor to institutional investors.
The Analytics. A close look at the disclosed documents tell us nothing about the net worth sweep that is not apparent on the face of the published agreement that the Federal Housing Finance Authority (FHFA) and the Department of Treasury used to put the Net Worth Sweep (NWS) in place. These were expert lawyers and they meant what they said and said what they meant—namely, that the sole purpose of the deal was to make sure that all the future profits generated by Fannie and Freddie would end up in the pockets of the United States Treasury above and beyond the 10 percent dividend set in the original 2008 agreement. It would have been, of course, imprudent for the two government agencies to announce their intention to collude publicly, so they engaged in a planned, but sham, transaction, that made it appear as if their joint action was the salvation of Fannie and Freddie. The supposed benefit was that the enterprises were relieved of any obligation to pay money to Treasury when they did not have money to pay it.
Unfortunately, for the government, the enterprises and their private shareholders already had two airtight defenses against such an unhappy result. First, if a company is insolvent it can’t pay any money to its shareholders as dividends or to its creditors anyhow. So it is a simple sham to claim that consideration has been supplied by relieving parties of any obligation to pay amounts that could not pay in any event. Second, as a legal matter, the SPSAs contained a so-called payment-in-kind clause, which allows Fannie and Freddie to not pay cash dividends so long as the deferred amounts accrue at a rate of 12 percent annually, two points higher than the 10 percent rate stipulated for cash dividends. The ability to exercise this deferred option carries with it two unambiguous consequences. First, it meant that Treasury never had to make any further advances to the entities if it thought it imprudent to do so. The GSE amounts due would just continue to accrue. Accordingly, there could be no death spiral in which Treasury would have to make advances to prop up a worthless enterprise, and no exhaustion of Treasury’s financing commitments. Second, this arrangement was not an open invitation for the conservators of the enterprises to squander money. Any net distributions to the enterprises’ private shareholders, whether as dividends or distributions on liquidation, were subordinate to the government’s senior preferred stock. It would therefore be unwise for any prudent trustee to incur higher rates of payment on the senior preferred if cash were available to make current cash dividends. The initial deal had a built-in financial stability that worked well in all states of the world. At no point in the documents did Treasury make reference to this decisive clause.
Similarly, the judicial treatment of the complete dividend arrangement on the motion to dismiss, no less, completely misunderstood these provisions. That short cut is perfectly permissible if the opinions make an accurate assessment of the stated transaction. But that was not to be had. In the original 2014 trial court decision by judge Royce Lamberth in Perry Capital v. Lew, this additional shareholder option was perversely construed as a penalty for late payment, which therefore had to be ignored in deciding on the validity of the NWS. Similarly, the clause was put to one side on the decision of the majority of the D.C. Circuit in Perry v. Mnuchin, with the glib pronouncement that director of FHFA, as a fiduciary, did not have to avail himself of the one option that worked to the greatest advantage of his beneficiaries, but could instead fork over all that excess cash to the government knowing that it received nothing of value in return. Why this extreme statement? Because there is no state of the world in which the private shareholders were better off after the NWS than they were without it. On the downside, the got no money either way. On the upside, they got no money either, as all the cash above the standard 10 percent (or, if appropriate, 12 percent) dividend went to the government. The government should have lost on the motion to dismiss.
Ad
The Documents. The overall message from the published documents is in perfect sync with the basic structure of the underlying deal. None of them are remotely privileged. The only damaging information that they contain is directly pertinent to the case, namely, on the state of mind of key government officials on the eve of the NWS. In order to best understand their impact, it is useful to examine the documents in reverse chronological order, starting with those that prepared just before the NWS was implemented. The point is quite simple. Whatever the earlier uncertainties, given the indications of the GSEs’ financial strength right before planned enactment, the government could have simply canceled the NWS without any public fanfare, knowing that the financial situation had stabilized. By going forward with the NWS, the high government officials knew that the NWS was not a salvage operation to prevent the bailout from collapsing, but a calculated effort to strip all the profits from the GSEs in a no-risk transaction for the Treasury.
Thus, on the Monday, August 13, four days before the announcement of the NWS, an email from Jim Parrott to Brian Deese, takes the candid view that:
We are making sure that each of these entities pays the taxpayer back every dollar of profit they make, not just a 10% dividend. (emphasis in original)
The taxpayer will thus ultimately collect more money with the changes.
With the overall set of changes, we have removed any doubt about the long-term fate of these entities: they will NOT be allowed to return to profitable entities at the center of our housing finance system, but instead wound down and replaced with a system driven by private capital and lower risk to the taxpayer.
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That of course is exactly what the NWS did. The obvious reading of this document is that four days before the NWS all the relevant officials on the eve of the NWS knew that government stood to make profits in excess of the agreed 10 percent dividend rate, notwithstanding any earlier doubts Treasury and FHFA had several months prior about the expected financial performance of Fannie and Freddie. Just before the NWS, these officials knew with certainty that there was no possibility of a death spiral in which the Treasury would constantly have to lend money to the GSEs in order to collect the required dividend from them. That result is confirmed by an earlier memo dated July 30, 2012, which announces the government’s intention to announce the changes on Friday, August 10 after the markets close. (The actual launch date was a week later, still on a Friday in in August in order to avoid serious media attention.) The memo’s stated rationale for the NWS was “GSEs will report very strong earnings on August 7, that will be in excess of the 10% dividend to be paid to Treasury.” The relevant information had not changed from July 30 to the announcement of the NWS on August 17.
The next critical document was dated June 25, 2012 from Treasury official Mary Miller to Michael Stegman. It relates that Ed DeMarco, the acting head of FHFA, had some doubts about how to proceed but no doubts about the increasing financial strength of Fannie and Freddie. Its relevant portion reads:
Through weeks of negotiating terms of possible amendments to the PSPAs, he [DeMarco] never questioned the need to adjust the dividend schedule this year. Since the Secretary raised the possibility of a PR [principal reduction to benefit distressed homeowners] covenant, DeMarco no longer sees the urgency of amending the PSPAs this year.
He has raised two competing reasons for this new position: (1) the GSEs will be generating large revenues over the coming years, thereby enabling them to pay the 10% annual dividend well into the future even with the caps; and, (2) instituting a net worth sweep in place of the dividend will further extend the lives of the GSEs to such an extent that it would remove the urgency for Congress to act on long-term housing finance reform. He now sees the PSPA amendments as a backdoor way of keeping the GSEs alive-getting to an Option 3-type plan [calling for the separation of special purpose vehicles for good and bad assets] without the need for legislation.
For these purposes the most salient portion of the document is the acknowledgment of the large revenues that will be sufficient to cover the dividend payments in the future with the caps in place, which meant that Treasury understood that no additional advances would ever be needed. The third option mentioned in the last paragraph refers to a position paper submitted to Secretary Timothy Geithner on December 12, 2011, or over eight months before the bailout took place. It contained a preliminary discussion of various policy options, the first of which called for restructuring “Treasury’s dividend payments from a fixed 10 percent annual rate to a variable payment based on available positive net worth (i.e. establish an income sweep). This will ensure that remaining PSPA funding capacity is not reduced in the future by draws to pay dividends.” At the very least both Miller and Stegman knew that both Fannie and Freddie could turn profitable shortly, which came to pass to its knowledge when the NWS was put into effect in August, 2012. This case is open and shut.
Commentaries on the released documents. Most of the commentators who read the documents thought that they revealed that Treasury and FHFA had a full knowledge that the GSEs had turned the corner into positive territory when the NWS was adopted. Gretchen Morgenson’s article of July 23 was entitled “U.S. Foresaw a Better Return in Seizing Fannie and Freddie Profits.” It was well understood”, she wrote “that decision to divert the profits knew that the change would most likely generate more revenue for the treasury. She explicitly concluded that Treasury’s stated explanation, to protect the taxpayers from further losses, was contradicted by the documents which showed “as early as December 2011, high level treasury official knew that Fannie and Freddy would soon become profitable again.” Her views were adopted wholesale by HousingWire, where once again the headline tells the whole story: “Newly sealed documents reveal real reason for Fannie, Freddie Profit sweep: Report: Geithner knew in 2011 that GSEs would soon be profitable.” Bloomberg News told the same story when it wrote “New Documents Give Hope to Fannie Shareholders seeking redress,” specifically pointing out that evidence undercut the key government claim that the NW was necessary to avert “a process known as a ‘circular draw’ or ‘death spiral.’”
The impact on litigation. The last question is how these revelations will impact ongoing litigation. The documents were released in connection with the Fairholme takings claim in the Federal Court of Claims. The sound theory of that case is that government had confiscated shareholder property when it stripped them of their dividend rights, their liquidation preferences, and their voting rights—the three attributes that give shares their value. Similarly, Jerome Corsi at InfoWars stated: “New Docs Support Fannie Mae and Freddie mac Shareholders in Court: Apologist [John Carney] Ignores Evidence They Illegal Confiscated Fannie and Freddie Earnings.”
That claim is made out by an examination of the relevant documents. If these cases are treated as direct expropriation of funds, governed by the per se rule in Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp. the bad faith of the government should not matter. But, if, as thus far has been the case, the NWS is evaluated under the more flexible doctrine of Penn Central Transportation Company v. City of New York this evidence fills any gap in the plaintiff’s case. Penn Central requires an explicit examination of the government reasons for imposing the sweep. The Treasury’s bad faith of the government overrides any potential government justification for making these shareholders bear a disproportionate share of funding general government activities. In the language of Penn Central, the NWS “has interfered with distinct investment-backed expectations,” without reference to any traditional police power concerns with health and safety. As Justice Holmes quipped in Pennsylvania Coal v. Mahon “a strong public desire to improve the public condition is not enough to warrant achieving the desire by a shorter cut than the constitutional way of paying for the change.” The government has meet its financial needs from general revenues, not by picking the pocket of the private shareholders. The takings claim therefore should be solidified by the release of these documents.
The documents revealed in the takings litigation should also influence the treatment of the various breach of fiduciary and contract claims in Perry Capital v. Lew, and in Perry Capital v. Mnuchin. Both the trial court in Lew and the D.C. Circuit on appeal in Mnuchin let the government win on summary judgment, without the benefit of any discovery at all. A correct reading of these documents shows that they gave summary judgment for the wrong party, the government. But now that Mnuchin is back to the District Court on remand, it should take those documents into account in making its decision on the validity of the plaintiff’s surviving contract claims.
The first time around, the Circuit Court badly mangled the proper tests for determining expectation damages. Its decision to divide outstanding shares into different subclasses destroys the underlying market, which can function only if all shares have identical attributes. Hence it was a huge mistake to insist that shareholder claims be fractionated so that individual shareholder expectations somehow depend whether the shares were purchased before or after the NWS was into place. The correct answer in all cases is that shareholder expectations are fixed at the time of initial issuance and purchase of these shares, such that any resales or other transfers of those shares do not affect the nature of the contract claims.
The D.C. Circuit’s revised opinion of July 17, 2017 backs off that categorical error. Nonetheless it still goes astray because of its failure to affirmatively state as a matter of law the correct rule that treats all shares identically. Instead its states the relevant inquiry on remand is “whether the Third Amendment violated the reasonable expectations of the parties.” The government knew at the time of the NWS that it was claiming more than it was entitled to. That fact should shape the reasonable expectations of the private parties who are entitled to think that the government will not consciously abuse its power by collusive transactions that were intended to strip the shareholders of all value in a sham transaction. The NWS benefited the government, and only the government. The District Court cannot decide this case in an informational vacuum, but must take this information into account in determining the reasonable shareholder expectations. The abuse of NWS is as relevant to the contract claims as it is to the takings claims. Judge Lamberth should not ignore undisputed evidence, which points to the total viability of the contract claims that the D.C. Circuit has asked him to reevaluate on remand.
Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch professor of Law at NYU, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.
Richard Epstein
Contributor
Right now I am a law professor with eclectic interests and three homes. My primary position is as the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, at New York University School of Law. But I am also a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago. Titles apart, I have spent over 40 years in teaching a variety of subjects, strongly resisting all forms of specialization. My set of interests runs from the obscure to the contemporary. I teach Roman law on a regular basis, and work constantly with materials from early English and American law. I do basic classes in property, contracts and torts, and lever these to work in areas of complex business transactions, such as land use development, corporations and securities, and have an abiding interest in all stages of constitutional law and political theory. When I was young I was told that "no utility infield has ever made it into the Hall of Fame," but I am too old to mend my ways. Outside the academics, I play basketball on a regular basis (don't ask about the jump-reach), do cross word puzzles with more interest than ability, and like classical music and art. I also take a strong interest in family life. There is a sense in which I think that I have led a charmed life, with a wonderful wife, Eileen and three children, one son-in-law and two grandchildren. It is odd to observe the tension between my happy personal life and the visible collective uneasiness about matters both domestic and foreign. I do try not to let the gloom of the world influence daily living and am known to sing (off-key) as a walk down the corridors.
Agree with all your points and yes changes are here and coming. Hang-em High!
Think if they ( whoever) can reverse Otting as unconstitutional then all previous actions meet the same fate ..... including cship .
Very well illustrated .
Means gov can be liable for damages?
Waters has no more power than Henrising over FHFA conservatorship.
The judge or plaintiff lawyer addressed this as being a credit card arrangement.
A clause in the agreement states if agreement found to be illlegal the agreement void and everything back to prior c-ship.
The speaking Judge was critical of the other district and circuit courts for ignorant key concepts and terms in their courts . Lots was acknowledged that were not before in other courts.
Read the post I responded to and you have the background content.
$31 billion divided by 1.8 billion shares ( FnF together = $15.5 per share )
I would say some of the signatures on the brief.
I did not read the brief. Looking at the endorsers of the brief says a lot about the brief. I thunk idiots fits. See a lot o black caucus members.
He and his crew ( cc and Ruudg) have been saying lawsuits do not apply to common . A recent summary by party of interest on action in the 5th and 8th circuits stated 09Suites are on behalf of Preferred and Common. These AOs have an agenda.