Fannie Mae-No Politics (FNMA)

[jkuhr]

If you're long, the biggest problem with your argument that you've been wronged is that government takeover was always on the table and you (presumably) were intelligent enough to recognize that (certainly evaluating it post-takeover??).

Lamberth factually has it right at Pages 49-50 in dismissing the regulatory takings arguments:

"For decades—and at the time each of the class plaintiffs purchased their GSE stock—the GSEs have been under the watchful eye of regulatory agencies and subject to conservatorship or receivership largely at the government’s discretion. See supra Section III(D)(2).56 As the Federal Circuit’s holdings in California Housing and Golden Pacific elucidate, by lacking the right to exclusive possession of their stock certificates—and therefore lacking a cognizable property interest—at the time of the Third Amendment, the plaintiff shareholders could not have “developed a historically rooted expectation of compensation” for any possible seizures that occurred during FHFA’s conservatorship. See Cal. Hous., 959 F.2d at 958. The plaintiffs “voluntarily entered into [investment contracts with] the highly regulated” GSEs. See Golden Pac., 15 F.3d at 1073.57 In fact, a number of the class plaintiffs purchased their shares mere months before or shortly after FHFA exercised its statutory authority to place the GSEs into conservatorship. E.g., In re Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Am. Compl. at ¶¶ 30-35; In re Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Derivative Compl. at ¶¶ 20-21. There can be no doubt that the plaintiff shareholders understood the risks intrinsic to investments in entities as closely regulated as the GSEs, and, as such, have not now been deprived of any reasonable investment-backed expectations."

This probably gets appealed but it is not unreasonable. Anyways, the crux of the long argument was not that the actions taken under HERA were outside the bounds of the law - it was that such a cruel and unusual bit of legislation was somehow unconstitutional... Wonder if this website will still be around when that gets decided? They invented the internet during the pendency of the Winstar cases... Who knows