Treasury Winds Down Mortgage Program With $25 Billion Gain
By Cheyenne Hopkins - Mar 19, 2012 8:00 AM CT
The U.S. Treasury Department said today it has wrapped up its mortgage bond program with a $25 billion profit.
The profit comes as the Treasury has been working to exit from its 2008 rescue programs, including the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
The Treasury sold its $250 billion in agency guaranteed mortgage-backed securities from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the department said. The Treasury bought the bonds in 2008 and 2009, it said in a statement.
“The successful sale of these securities marks another important milestone in the wind down of the government’s emergency financial crisis response efforts,” Treasury assistant secretary for financial markets Mary Miller said in the release. “This program helped support the housing market during a critical moment for our nation’s economy and delivered a substantial profit for taxpayers.”
The Treasury purchased $225 billion in government- sponsored-enterprise bonds and made a profit of $25 billion from principal, interest and the sale. Treasury announced in March 2011 it would begin winding down the program through sales of as much as $10 billion of bonds a month.
The Obama administration has highlighted the performance of the TARP bank program, which has returned about $259 billion, more than the $245 billion lenders received. There are 361 banks still remaining in TARP.
To contact the reporter on this story: Cheyenne Hopkins in Washington at chopkins19@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christopher Wellisz at cwellisz@bloomberg.net
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