Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Exactly! Totally agree! As I've said before, the simple fact that the common shares have remained on the market is incredibly profound, given what we have witnessed unfold. That fact alone is like a doorway into how masterfully devious and criminal this entire series of acts has been. And I truly believe the plan they unhatched had a number of contingencies, and they gave themselves a longer than 10 yr time frame to achieve their ultimate goals.
Great question. Something's going on beyond MM manipulation. When MMs play such games, it's not often this slow and steady and dragged out, as far as I know or suspect. This looks like a methodical exit by a big holder. Sure someone is buying but price drops when there are more sellers than buyers. Systematically offering more shares for sale every day than buyers want to buy has resulted in this slow drop.
Are GSEs allowed to buy own shares? Buyback approved by Conservator? Wouldn't a share buyback need to be approved by the board, which is this case is the conservator?
I haven't looked at the balance sheet in a while. Is it really showing reduced shares outstanding recently, thus revealing a buyback happening?
Ackman's dollar amount invested's small enough to lose. He owns a large percentage of the shares, but in dollar terms, his fund could easily stand to lose his entire GSE investment without missing a step. So I actually do not think he is necessarily the huge seller, if there is one. I think if he knows something definitive that we don't, it could be him. But if there's nothing definitive/truly decided yet about the ultimate fate of the GSEs, then Ackman might as well hold until it reaches zero and even then keep holding, because why not? He'd only lose about 3% of his entire fund if FNMA went to zero (if I recall correctly his dollar amount invested). But if there is even a very slight chance the common shareholders will ultimately be ok, Ackman would decide to hold. There does seem to still be a chance for that to happen.
Does 3month chart show "selling program"? So smooth and steady has been the slope down. Doesn't it almost seem like some huge holder of FNMA has told his broker to start a selling program, to not dump it all at once, to just slowly get out of this ticker without causing any panic among other shareholders?
I'm worried that's what appears to be going on.
Great questions! Is there any recourse the citizens have to get that money back? I doubt it. But are you aware of any statute or process law that might've been violated by sending the $ to those groups?
Media's not complacent. They're corrupt. Plain and simple. They have merged with the one party, and have become on and the same.
Wow thanks for that info! My "mention" of La Raza was in that section of text in quotes from one of the articles I linked to. I wasn't aware La Raza had rebranded though! Funny, when I saw them mentioned in the article I thought- hm, with this massive rise in profile of so many radical leftist groups recently, why haven't I heard their name lately? I see why now. And yes even in the 1990s I was first made aware of La Raza bc someone told me there's a group out there called La Raza that's advocating taking back a portion of US territory to give it back to Mexico!
Well now, since La Raza simply translates as "The Race", and the D party increasingly tries to make every single issue into one about race, I guess having a strong ally called "The Race" was becoming more difficult to justify. So just rebrand them. Easy enough. ACORN did the same thing once they were exposed.
I have said I think the Republican party should disband itself, and rebrand for about 15 yrs now. Polls show most people agree with the types of policies traditionally advocated by repubs, like lower spending, lower taxes. But the name "republican" has been just decimated, become a punch line, whether due to media/hollywood efforts or via the repubs' own deviation from those traditional policies, or both. But a rebranding is in order, for sure.
Here's where settlement $ went.
President B.O. directed that money from settlements reached between TBTF and the FHFA (and CFPB) be given/sent/forwarded to a series of leftist political groups, some of which were on the very extreme/radical end of the spectrum, forming a sort of slush fund for political organizations on the extreme left, and siphoning the money away from where it rightfully should've gone. One might agree with those radical political groups' missions or not. But it's quite dishonest to direct that money to them. And this is all very well documented, yet hardly ever reported. However, Obama did the same exact thing back when he ran the Annenberg Challenge in Chicago before he was famous; in the 1990s he funneled money that was donated to go towards "education" into local radical/socialist/communist political action groups. But no one in the media reported on his past at all, and so he was elected president.
And similarly, money from the ACA (Obamacare) legislation was also funneled to radical leftist organizations, even ones that had nothing to do with the health issue. Between the FHFA and CFPB settlements, the amount is in the tens of billions of dollars. And That's before we account for the ACA money sent to the same types of political action groups.
About the organizations that received the settlement money,
----
"But their activities are more political than charitable. IBD obtained a list of groups eligible for the bank payola, as approved by CFPB Director Richard Cordray and Labor Secretary Thomas Perez. It includes:
• The Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia, whose directors include senior Democratic National Committee officials; the self-described "policy advocacy" group has lobbied Congress for more welfare spending at least 108 times since Obama took office.
• The Mississippi Center for Justice, whose stated mission is "advancing racial and economic justice" and "attacking predatory lending practices."
• People's Community Action Corp. of St. Louis, which has seated Obama appointees and Democrat lawmakers on its board.
The CFPB says the money will aid these and other left-wing groups in helping 45 million otherwise uncreditworthy, low-income people living in America obtain loans to buy cars and homes.
It complains that these mostly minority and immigrant consumers are "economically vulnerable" and "have limited access to mainstream financial services."
So in effect the government is forcing banks to fork over payola to radical nonprofit groups that exist to shake down banks for high-risk urban home loans — the kind of mortgages that defaulted in droves during the housing crisis. The money also restocks their war chest to lobby Congress for expansion of the disastrous Community Reinvestment Act.
Justice created a similar slush fund from discrimination lawsuits against banks to provide backdoor funding to nonprofit housing groups tied to Democrats, steering huge sums to affordable-housing activist groups approved by HUD, including:
• La Raza, which pressures banks to qualify more low-income Latino immigrants for home loans.
• National Community Reinvestment Coalition, Washington's most aggressive lobbyist for the CRA.
• Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America, whose director calls himself a "bank terrorist."
• Operation Hope, a South Central Los Angeles group pressuring banks to make "dignity mortgages."
• Mutual Housing Association of New York, or MHANY, a spinoff of an Acorn housing unit.
Now the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is launching its own scheme to cut Democrat activist groups in on its own multimillion-dollar settlements.
Obama's Department of Housing and Urban Development is also getting in on the act.
In a $200 million settlement with Associated Bank, which the agency accused of lending discrimination, HUD is forcing the Wisconsin bank to funnel tens of millions in "donations" to "community groups."
This is extortion of private business by government. Congress' new leadership must call on the agency's inspector general and the Government Accountability Office to audit these pernicious payola schemes."
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/cfpb-diverts-civil-penalty-funds-to-democrat-activist-groups/
---
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.dailycaller.com/2017/10/24/emails-confirm-obama-doj-funneled-big-bank-settlement-money-to-liberal-groups/
www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/10/25/smoking-gun-email-reveals-obama-doj-blocked-conservative-groups-from-settlement-funds-gop-lawmaker-says.amp.html
https://nypost.com/2017/09/23/how-obama-is-funding-the-anti-trump-resistance/amp/
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-06/cfpb-reportedly-funneled-billions-secret-democrat-slush-fund-consultant-claims
https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2017/11/29/it-turns-out-democrats-love-dark-money/amp/
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/wreck-annenberg
https://www.aim.org/special-report/grand-theft-obama-the-biggest-heist-in-u-s-history/
Agreed. No justice. Only criminals. This is a great example of how, once a certain type of mafia gets powerful enough, it entrenches itself and enmeshes itself within the very fabric of our laws and legal system. It cannot be defeated, apparently, despite brazen abuses and crimes committed. It is insulated. It curates and nourishes its own immunity by showering money upon elected officials and unelected power brokers. It corrupts all it touches, and dumbs down any non-players who might otherwise notice and raise alarm. Its claws also guide and mislead the idiots who work in major media outlets.
I agree but fear institutions might not care. I fear that some institutions would not hesitate at all to invest in GSEs even after gvt wiped out previous shareholders. In a low yield environment overall, the search for yield could make some institutional money desperate enough to do it.
grounds for Sweeney to dismiss case entirely?
Audit the Fed, already, please!! That's the first step to this country facing facts, being able to more clearly understand what's going on, what needs to be done, how we might want to change things, etc. i'm being so general because that's just how incredibly important auditing the Fed would be! It would then allow for real considerations and debates about the future. There's just no way we or our elected officials can come up with good policies without fully understanding what the Fed has done to us over the last 100 yrs.
It's the nature of criminals to never stop. That's what's happening. It's profound and simple to think of it that way, but this kind of ongoing, endless, and even escalating theft in the face of the simplest of laws against it (5th amendment) is what power does in all human history. Power does this because it can, because it is like the scorpion who stung the turtle while crossing the river. Power will keep robbing us because it receives generally very little resistance. Our laws and system of enforcement are not strong enough to withstand the level of corruption and deception that is, for power (in the form of the TBTF/DC marriage team / syndicate), simply standard daily operating procedure, which is what it is for the vile mafioso/thieves who comprise the TBTF board rooms and management and the halls of congress and the deep state agencies. We've read their emails. They are blatant criminals. And they will never stop. They might (small but hopeful chance) be limited in their crimes by some court decision. But the court system isn't fast enough for justice to matter in this case, as the endless delays have given the TBTF countless ways to extend and expand their crimes. And if anyone thinks judges can't be influenced or threatened...c'mon. In this case they're forcing a draw, on top of all the previous theft and media lies they pay for, etc. In the end, if the best case scenario for commons is Moelis, then that is yet an ADDITIONAL layer of criminality that POWER has injected at the last minute. I dare anyone who's held since, say, '09 or '11 or so to do an IRR calculation plus a risk/reward of Sharpe Ratio calculation once shares get to $10 as a result of Moelis (if ever). I think / fear we'd find that it was actually not worth it to hold commons here while much less risk and very good returns were easily available elsewhere all that time. Holding this has been perhaps the best civics lesson ever, but also the most expensive one!
Rely on SCOTUS? Erratic history of rulings. Kelo case? Dread Scott? You think it's a certainty that a majority of SCOTUS justices will say the gvt cant do this, when they've previously ruled the gvt can forcibly confiscate one's property and give it to someone else if it means someone else will be able to generate more tax revenues from that property?
The lower 2018 number appears to match the DTA adjustment, as the one commenter after that article mentions.
I don't think the gvt would telegraph its GSE intentions in the budget if it could avoid it.
I've had similar thoughts. TBTF could acquire fannie AND freddie, and do whatever they want with them. Perhaps the TBTF would rather have their own mtg finance businesses not subject to things like gvt affordable housing mandates etc. Maybe that's why they haven't simply bought out the GSEs.
Makes me so sick. Level of crime is astounding.
Unfortunately I agree wholeheartedly Amelia.
Can someone briefly list the recent lawsuits that have dropped like flies, btw? I fear I might have missed one or two such developments recently.
Shows how crucial lobbying is. GSEs have none! And they're getting railroaded.
Thanks again, Navy!
Brilliantly put! "The hard part is coming up with what appears to be a fix, but that really screws everyone involved. They have been working for 10 years on that and still have not found a way."
An honest and righteous fix would be exactly what you wrote in your post: count the payments towards payback and recap and release. Heck, exercising the warrants, even though I abhor the idea, could be argued as honest and righteous too. Anyway, yes, i believe the TBTF banks as well as the Fed Reserve knew full well that it could take more than ten years after the '08 crisis for them to really be able to "finish the job" here. They play a long game. During those ten yrs they have proposed "fixes" via their paid-for criminal mouthpieces in Congress, fixes which would have "finished the job" for them earlier than they anticipated. But I think they're patient and venomous, and will continue to wait and try to force their will (via donating heavily to individual congressmen's campaigns) upon the country.
Congress passed law allowing it insider trading.
First it was legal for them to do insider trading. Then in '12 I think it was, they passed a law making it NOT legal for them to do it anymore. It was an election year and it made congress look just slightly less criminal than it is. Then in early 2013, after they were all sworn into their new terms, they passed a law that once again ALLOWED them to do insider trading. It hasn't changed since.
Hm, that doesn't tell us much, then. It's been too long since we heard from him here.
$177B fund can risk $1B easily. So, yes your point is probably that a fund that large knows what it's doing, and thus it makes FNMA look better.
I'm long. But a $177B fund would be very comfortable losing $1B on an investment if there is also some reward to go along with the potential risk. In other words, they're probably prepared to lose the entire $1B it sunk into the GSEs.
Fascinating. That's the first I've heard about any potential legal avenues in the case the commons really do get screwed. You'd think someone at the corrupt DOJ or corrupt Treasury might have realized this and settled long ago. But they didn't, most likely because that's just an example of how powerful the TBTF are. They order their foot soldiers in the gvt to do whatever they want, even if it's blatantly illegal in multiple ways.
My fear exactly. It seems like a very realistic way this gets "resolved", with a "narrative" spread so far and wide that it indeed ends up trumping the law and the evidence (really, no pun intended).
Many such narratives, built on misinterpretations and misrepresentations of facts, still dominate in other areas. Example: "The Civil War was fought over issue of slavery." That's just one example. Not to get into it, but that narrative is easily digestible, even though the true nature and causes of that war are more complicated than that, and some have argued slavery wasn't really even the main reason for the conflict. Yet ask anyone what that war was fought for. And you'll get the answer: "the GSEs caused the '08 crisis, were bailed out, then couldn't remain profitable and ended up costing the taxpayers billions, so they had to be shutdown."
Good point. "Reincorporate" doesn't definitively imply screwing current shareholders. I agree that it's vague. I suppose that's exactly why I took the skeptical view of it.
I don't know how to word this, but taking into account the record of the gvt's treatment of shareholders, I think a high amount of skepticism is required. And just keep reminding ourselves of one of the utmost important questions: why were/are the common still allowed to trade, both after the initial '08 action and the '12 3rd amendment?
I think most of the answers to that question start to reveal the massive scope of the gvt's criminal intent and criminal actions.
"Reincorporated"? Implies current "corporation" disappears, and new shareholders form the new corporation. I HOPE i'm wrong!!
But I posted on the same issue a couple of days ago, trying to parse the language we're hearing about restructuring, etc.
It occurred to me that even though a restructuring and/or reincorporation doesn't necessarily HAVE to screw the CURRENT common shareholders, the fact that current common shareholders have been so incredibly toyed-with, and so incredibly mistreated by frankly illegal actions, and they've continued to allow commons to trade in order to NOT force the GSEs' liabilities onto the US gvt's balance sheet, I think the likelihood is that current common shareholders will get screwed to some degree. I mean, allowing the shares to continue to trade after the '08 and '12 actions against the GSEs is/was, I fear, something that boils down to concern for the US gvt's balance sheet AS WELL as an effort to punish the shareholders. Yes, punish, because the GSEs were so much maligned by so many power brokers in DC for so long (decades). I think forcing them off NYSE and onto the pink sheets and letting them trade there is just rubbing their noses in it, or piling on. I think there seems to be actual hatred of current common shareholders amongst most power brokers, as well as the fact that the current common shareholders literally are standing in the way of the TBTF making more money.
Devil's in details for commons. "Restructuring", "returning" to private shareholder-based ownership unfortunately does not necessarily mean restructuring in a manner that protects the current common shareholders (see many corporate restructuring examples where commons get screwed). Unfortunately it does not, grammatically at least, mean the current common shareholders will be the same shareholders once the entities would be "returned" to private shareholder ownership. They could, in theory, be saying that they want to have the end result be that the GSEs will be owned by shareholders. But that does NOT necessarily mean that the current shareholders won't be screwed in the process. They could, in theory, shut down the GSEs and restructure the commons OUT of the transition into reforming the GSEs as one NEW entity, which could be owned by entirely new and different shareholders. I'm just parsing the language bc these criminals use language to deceive us all the time. In a court of law, i could easily explain how the sentence from your cited quote actually does not necessarily make current common shareholders feel any safer. I've been long for years now and holding, btw. I'm looking for positive developments too, but I do not necessarily trust these criminals to protect the current common shareholders. GM's current common shareholders: are they the same people who held commons before '08? GM's case is very different. But the gvt didn't follow the law in that case. Why would they feel they must in the GSEs' case?
If HERA suddenly allowed gvt to own stock, why isn't Treasury hiring hoards of stock-pickers and analysts?
What of the idea that government can't own stock? The idea is that it is technically illegal for he gvt to even own stock, because if they did, they'd have a motive to make regulations and laws that help he stocks they own, and thus hurting those stocks' competitors, etc.
Is there any lawsuit even challenging the very notion of the gvt owning stocks?
Owns Fannie, no freddie. What's the increase? 67 mil shares of common. How has that changed?
And yet its ownership of FNMA is still only about 0.1% of their net assets.
If there's been a big increase, I'd be curious to know who's running that firm.
Insanity / Lawlessness / Corruption
What Was said at event, causing pps drop? Was it Philips saying "there are no shareholders"? Or something else?
Perfect. Even better than Washington Federal case!
Great question.
That's exactly my fear; "the narrative" they'd create after the GSEs have no capital, or after whatever next development happens.
I've posted about it before.
And where did the administration send that fine$? I know the answer. But readers might be intrigued to search for words such as
-CFPB fine money radical causes-
to find the answer.
On heels of AirCorkerOne TN flight, interesting. Maybe a little worrisome even, so soon after the love fest with Corker.