Fannie Mae-No Politics (FNMA)

[andydub]

Hi, @Fully Diluted. {I hope your user name is essentially ironic. ) Much of what I am about to say, I expect you already know, but is more for foundation and for the audience. I hope you won't take any of this as condescending. With that disclaimer...

I don't think this is a big deal because I don't believe it could ever become a point of contention between the actual parties (FHFA and USTsy) but I would ask you to read section three of the SPS certificates more closely. While there is language regarding dividends being repaid in that section, it seems clear to me that any paydown of the respective LPs, including repayment of dividends, is still only allowed if and when the USTSy funding commitment has been terminated. That commitment has not (that I have heard) been terminated, thus clause three does not allow any paydown of the LP. Again, a small point to my mind, really just my vanity makes me contend it. (And the few ales I may have had in celebration of the long weekend.)

You seem to be one of the few who have understood that not only the SPSPAs, but also the SPS certificates govern the situation. But it feels to me like you are speaking as if the SPSPAs and their accompanying certificates are written in stone. They are not law, they are contracts, and the parties involved in a contract can decide whatever they want about it, (amend it, or even tear it up completely,) as long as such decisions are not themselves illegal. Of course, the Housing and Economic Reform Act (HERA) is a law and has effed up a few things in all this, but I am not seeing that any of the particulars we are discussing at the moment have HERA getting in the way.

We have FHFA as conservator, (man, that still, and always, pushes bile up the back of my throat,) having subsumed [usurped] by law under HERA, (whether one likes that or not, and feel free to beg the Supreme Court of the United States of America to override the recorded decree of the Congress of the United States of America,) the rights of FnF shareholders on one side. The Treasury of the United States of America sits on the other.

At any time, as long as both parties agree, they can do whatever they want about the SPS LP and SPSPAs, within the law of the land, within the powers delegated to them as US gov entities, and particularly within the law of HERA. (Brief aside: USTsy is not even allowed to make another direct investment in FnF, HERA prohibits that because the time expired. They can only indirectly invest through the draw to which they committed in the SPSPAs when ForF needs it, and luckily that is the only way they are allowed to extort any more LP out of us.)

For example, they could agree (and this is a bizarre example for illustration, and perhaps a bit of personal fantasy, not politically reasonable,) that not only has the investment been repaid, but that USTsy realizes they have done wrong and grants to both companies the cancellation of the respective LPs and pay $60 billion to FNMA and $30 billion to FMCC, (just grabbing a roughly proportional per-share number within the limits of the few ales I've had today) and shake hands and go home.

Of course, NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. But my point is that while you are correctly interpreting the SPSPAs and certificates, let's not forget that with both parties ostensibly under the same administration, the agreements can be twisted into whatever "The Boss" likes. The big question is whether "The Boss" is on "our side" in this. IMO, only time will tell.

GLTU and GLTA, and enjoy the looooong weekend...