Fannie Mae-No Politics (FNMA)

[chessmaster315]

Forbes: Government used accounting gimmicks to force fannie into bailout.

government used some highly questionable accounting tactics in order to make it appear that Fannie Mae needed a bailout Their analysis shows that Fannie actually had enough cash reserves to have made it through the recession; in fact, they show that Fannie actually generated positive net cash income every quarter throughout the mortgage market meltdown.

Even worse:

The federal government appears to have done two fraudulent things on the way to our current situation. First, they used false pretenses to take over Fannie and Freddie. Second, they pretended they were only temporarily providing financial stability. While the government took an ownership stake in return for its “bailout” (a trick it may have learned from Warren Buffett) , they allowed private shareholders to remain and have even sold some of the government’s shares on multiple occasions. However, unlike a truly private company, all profits of Fannie and Freddie are still being seized by the government for reasons which are unclear and possibly illegal.