Replies to post #765612 on Fannie Mae-No Politics (FNMA)

[Robert from yahoo bd]

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac perform a vital service to the US Government, American Families, and the entire US Housing Finance Market.

So what does the US Government do? Punish the Shareholders by Nationalizing their Corporations for a decade and a half and COUNTING!

[Louie_Louie]

I agree. It would be absolutely clarifying if we could get the full BOD's testimony or all under a lie detector.

[Mnemonic]

I *personally* don't think it was as malicious as all that. At least not to start.

Paulson indicated that Russia was trying to convince China to dump F&F bonds together in 2008, which would have freaked out the market. So the takeover was more for the appearance of stability than for actual stability. After that, they walked into the companies and saw that the vast majority of their capital buffer was in DTA's rather than cash. Gov't got worried again--especially after the slew of bank failures--and made a bad accounting decision to write down the DTA's.

Only thing super questionable here was the deliberately punitive terms of the bailout agreement. No one other than AIG had to pay 10% dividends, and even they were able to negotiate their rate down. And of course, everything since 2012 with the NWS was basically malice. Gov't was planning on winding down the GSE's but couldn't come up with a plan. The reversal of the DTA's and positive earnings projections would have made it basically impossible to shutter them. So they lied and took all the money. Then they lied about lying about it for a decade.