Well put, Obit. And I agree with your conclusion that the legal process will separate the wheat from the chaff to only leave the pieces that will properly fit into the final whole.
I can't precisely say much about the lawsuits in spite of some heavy reading. The missing actor, the government, hasn't revealed all what it thinks. Not to mention I am far from a legal expert but my layman view is that there appear to be some inconsistencies for the court to assess and that this inconsistencies will take greater importance as the process goes on shifting the center of the discussion from simply taking private property away and similar claims to the deeper meaning of what occurred and how.
Say, the claim -by gov- that individual shareholders have no claims because there are no individual shareholders anymore finds receptive ears on a judge, the court may still struggle with the notion that the one and only standing shareholder -FHFA through the conservatorship- immolates the institutions that give this shareholder the sole reason to exist. A contradiction in itself. Just like allowing stock certificates to continue to trade/exist while shareholders were absorbed into one single entity taking their place. How would those buying valid shares in the open market be called then? Were or were they not shareholders? Were or were they not buying valid shares of existing companies?
In the end, the sloppy process the government carried out may come back to hurt them. Unless a judge determines that the situation at the time was such that the government couldn't have envisioned all what later happened, thus validating some of the inconsistencies.
Unlike the majority posting I do not think the lawsuits are a done deal. And I have large chunk of preferred shares.
