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Didn’t they say sweep ends this yr?
Try waiting 3yrs for Sweeney to decide jurisdiction!
Again- fake/spin news and fund/dc/media connection
Old HedgeFund interview video reveals mechanics of “fakeNews”.
Probably no FHFA/treasury action ‘til after EnBanc, correct? Aren’t they kinda forced to wait for the decision before they announce or take any action? It’d kinda be pointless to take action while a large case like this is about to be decided, wouldn’t it be?
Hello again 955! Long time no chat here. Still hanging in there am I. And you are correct as usual.
Howard makes great point there. Makes perfect sense, given the risk profile of the GSEs’ business. And I’d never heard that point before, in all these many years!
There is no need to have capital that’s comparable to large banks bc those financial institutions are spread out globally and those markets are more correlated than most might think. But F&F’s business is highly focused, is strictly domestic, and not correlated so strongly to global equities markets per se. Basically, the “comp” cited by Calabria is simply wrong.
Scotus ruling; lead to more direct Federal lawsuits?
I’m not an expert on in which jurisdictions all the various ongoing lawsuits were originally filed. But does this ruling suggest that perhaps more lawsuits by GSE shareholders will be filed now? And filed directly in Federal court now, and no need to wade through state courts?
“Access to property”, SCOTUS, and FNMA still trades???
What does “access to our property” mean for an FNMA shareholder, exactly? Think about it...(and this gets into EXACTLY why I think the fact that the GSEs common shares were allowed to continue to be traded is a profoundly revealing fact that proves a “taking”)... “access” to our property legally implies access to the BENEFITS of OWNING that property. What are the benefits of owning shares? They’ve been legally defined going back hundreds of years. The benefits include participation in the profits, and voting ability. Since the illegal taking took place, there’s been no participation in profits, and no voting rights. The only benefit remaining is simply trading almost meaningless shares, because they carry no such benefits with them. The GSEs were not removed from the market bc allowing them to still trade maintained the ILLUSION of the shareholders having some shred of “access” to the benefits of owning the shares. By all logic, given what the gvt/TBTF complex was trying to accomplish by taking over the GSEs, the shares should NOT have continued to trade. They traded as zombie tickers for ten years, as a way of making a somewhat plausible argument that the shareholders still have some access to the benefits of ownership, when they definitely had no SIGNIFICANT or meaningful access to the recognized benefits of ownership of shares in a company. If the shares weren’t allowed to continue to trade, then the entire fraud becomes revealed, and becomes super obvious. But by allowing them to trade, that disguises the fraud a little bit, at least.
Why didn’t plaintiffs request NWS injunction?
I recall discussion of that around here. What was ultimately the answer? It made no sense to me to not stop the NWS while the case proceeded.
Been going on for 10yrs now. This is normal for the GSE tickers, since a) politicians are totally corrupt, b) tbtf banks control them, c) they forced these tickers into unregulated exchanges, and d) hit-job reporters are very cheaply bought and paid-for, yet have an outsized effect with their pieces.
Has anyone found these docs yet?
Pressure sometimes works. Thanks for posting. It’s crazy to think that a judge’s ruling would/could be impacted by public pressure but hey, it’s happened before. Judges are human.
We need more: restitution of past sweep money. I haven’t heard for sure whether that’s in any of the complaints as prayer for relief, but it would make perfect sense to force the gvt to pay back all net worth sweep payments over a reasonable interest rate for the times, say even 4% would make sense. That’d be a fast way to recap the GSEs. But even IF that were to happen, ultimately it still means that the TBTF were able to get away with fleecing the taxpayers.
Very interesting point! I’ve mentioned here that another almost intractable problem is that the nature of some crimes, like what was done to the GSEs in ‘08, ‘12 etc, involved sometimes complicated accounting details. What are the odds that any given judge can follow all that? Bringing in experts to testify might help but ultimately - can the experts even communicate the crimes clearly to a judge, or jury? I really think this is an area of “the system” where there’s almost a kind of arbitrage opportunity for sophisticated criminals, bc the sophisticated nature of their crimes is often beyond the court room’s ability to grasp. Granted, the fundamental principles violated in this case are not hard to grasp at all. But proving it and / or convincing a judge / jury beyond reasonable doubt is another matter entirely. Also, i agree with your point about judges, too.
Well said.
100% agree. Nice job boiling it down. And notice, they will actually manage to convince quite a few common shareholders that this is a really fair result. Fairness is something, in their world not ours, that begins only when the previous 7-10 yrs theft is forgotten and wiped from the record (but not rectified), and enough of the victims are so worn down that all they want is a few pennies back.
He did? Insider trading? Please refresh my memory on that one bc I wasn’t aware he had been caught doing that. Otting, right? Crazy.
The story about common security being launched.
Announced same day as Gasparino report? Anything we can make of that coincidence? One positive, and one potentially negative story on the same day.
Anyone ever asked Epstein about this possibility? It sounds fantastic. He'd be at least one person whose opinion I'd respect on the matter.
Fnma commons would not have gone to zero, however. We know the GSEs were not nearly insolvent, and that there were standing offers of money/capital injections from international sources (china). Plus there was the real possibility of injections via in-kind arrangements.
In AIG's case, did any of that exist? If not, then maybe the judge had some justification for refusing compensation to AIG common shareholders, bc essentially the company did become insolvent. But since FNMA and FMAC were not on their way to insolvency, the commons should get compensated / warrants canceled.
Ha. And hey, did Paulson leak in '08?
So you are strongly predicting Moelis happens?
Is he hinting at a Moelis plan here?
Another guess: if Rosner is aware of or is predicting major GSE policy changes, he might think a big drop in housing prices like that could result. Example; GSEs make loans more affordable for the average person. If banks had to hold more of their own mortgages they generate, and didn't have the GSEs to sell them to right after they generate them, then the banks would have to be more careful and would likely charge higher interest and/or shorter terms. That would make loan payments higher, and thus homes would be affordable to fewer people. In theory, if the GSEs were eliminated, for example, then the monthly payment required to own a home would probably rise. But that doesn't mean the buyer would pay more for the home over the term of the mortgage. In fact, the buyer would likely pay less for the home overall, when the purchase price and all monthly payments are added up. The GSEs providing that huge liquidity to banks' mortgages actually probably has the effect of increasing house prices due to decreasing the required monthly payment in most mortgages. That increases the number of people who could afford to buy any given home, and that increases demand, which increases home prices. Remove the GSEs, and home prices would probably drop steadily over a period of years. I hope that's not what Rosner thinks will happen!
Guessing here: Maybe he's referring to a demographic time bombs of sorts, whereby the baby boomer generation passes away at a higher rate, and / or retires at a higher rate (meaning more of them retire). Many think that will put pressure on housing prices, as their children don't want to inherit their houses, so they'll sell.
I'm not sure why he said people will start to figure it out within the next 36 months. On that timeline, I imagine that if interest rates continue to rise, that will trigger significant price drops. And if China's economy continues to struggle, that will put pressure on prices because they've been buying a lot of property here over recent years. Rosner's mentioned student loans delaying home ownership, too. I wonder why he says he "is certain" of this, and why 36 months is his timeline.
Ackman estimated $20-45 a few years ago, if I recall correctly. That was before Moelis's proposal came out, and Ackman also made it clear that things could change and revise that estimate.
When/where did Mooch say "receivership"? Is that true?
I've posted here years ago saying that I might even be ok with losing my entire gse investment if it meant that all the info about what really happened and who was involved came to light and people were prosecuted.
Granted, there'd be no reason those two things would be related by cause and effect, per se, but I'd almost / probably be willing to give up my entire investment if it would somehow bring about those results.
Those are exactly the days I was referring to! I've been here that long also. I remember seeing "i paid off my house with this. i can't believe it!!"
It ran 90million shares in a day a few yrs ago!
Why the big volume today?
Discovery from which case, again? Thanks!
But really, when the gvt does something illegal, like lying in court, who is there to punish them?
It's nice to see proof plain as day, though, right there in that email.
They were trying to make a false narrative supporting wind down, while simultaneously discussing their expectations that the GSEs would soon be profitable. Losers, criminals, all of them.
Accounting-based case, too complicated for most judges. I posted this same thought about 2 yrs ago maybe.
This is essentially a hole in our entire justice system: some cases involve accounting tricks that are too complicated for most judges to understand. In this GSE situation, for example, how many judges out there would be capable of grasping the profound enormity of the fact that through all of this saga, the shares have been allowed to trade? Probably mot one judge.
Have plaintiffs' lawyers been double agents?
So many cases, and in so many of them, the plaintiffs' lawyers have seemingly chosen to argue their weakest grievances rather than their strongest ones. They seem to have so consistently avoided contesting the bigger questions such as HERA, FHFA constitutionality, the original '08 action (and the board being "under duress" when they made the decision), and even smaller arguments that are also incredibly strong like process violations, that I am starting to think they are maybe being paid by TBTF to ACT like they are working for their clients' best interests when in fact they are deliberately choosing to pursue the less powerful legal angles. If TBTF were evil geniuses (any question they are?), then they would find or create a way to influence or control the plaintiffs via their own council. And they would make sure the plaintiffs' council chose to focus on the weaker arguments. That way, everything appears as if there is a legitimate legal battle going on, when in fact the plaintiffs lawyers are deliberately tanking the cases but making it seem like they are trying hard to win. .
?Is whether awarding compensatory damages conflicts w/Conservatorship? That's the question?
Am I understanding that correctly?
I must not be, because I can't see how a judge would think that awarding damages because of what the "conservator" did to wrongfully harm shareholders would warrant a concern that the act of awarding damages might possibly be construed as stepping on the conservator's shoes.shoes
Wow! Nice to see your name here again! A fellow old timer from the days of yore!
What "latest developments"? Really, not much has developed lately.
Letting GSE shares trade reveals enormous corruption. The scale of thievery can start to be understood when one understands what allowing the shares to trade truly means in terms of the companies' balance sheets and also the nation's balance sheet, as well as hundreds of years of business law. Allowing the shares to trade is in fact what let the TBTF "have their cake and eat it to" after the '08 crisis. Allowing the shares to trade was a way of trapping certain firms and people who had (if they hadn't been trapped) the resourced and wherewithal to fight, sue and win against the entire illegal plan. It has also served to keep an illusion going that nothing illegal was done. It has also prevented the GSEs' liabilities from transferring to the gvt's balance sheet. It put the companies' legal status in limbo and allowed room for debate about what truly happened. It allowed the GSEs to remain in existence as zombie entities controlled by TBTF-owned political hacks so that the TBTF had a place into which they could dump their toxic assets. None of that could've happened if the shares weren't allowed to keep trading. There is zero "economic benefit" to owning these shares now, bc there is zero shareholder say in the decision making process. BUT in order for the TBTB plan to have worked, some amount of common equity must have been preserved and must've remained on the GSEs' balance sheet. I could go on, but really, the fact that the shares were allowed to keep being traded is so profound a detail, it's incredible how much that fact alone reveals about the overall TBTF plan and its execution.