If you are waiting on the housing market to show some improvement the final quarter of 2009, after Fannie and Freddie asked for a 400 billion maximum in credit, you can think again.
With this increase in available credit for the federal corporations, the Obama administration simply avoids the embarrassment and humiliation of addressing the failures of these institutions in public media, after all they already received more bailout money than any other corporation due to their close ties with government officials.
There is no better example of what happens when the government tries to manage a market than what has happened to these 2 government corporation and the corresponding performance of the housing market. With home defaults continuing to increase, each federal corporation divulged information regarding the governments insistence they help out the housing market will cost Americans.
Thus, increasing their lines of available credit is the best, and most secretive way, the administration and legislators can bail them out without attracting a lot more public scrutiny.
And, since Fannie and Freddie are outside of the Pay Czars control, given that they received their bailout money before the executive compensation restrictions were ever in place, their executives will receive even higher bonuses than before, comprised completely of tax payer money, of course.
Unlike Citigroup, Bank of America, AIG, Chrysler, and GM, Congress deemed that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had not received “exceptional assistance” and therefore did not have to have their pay decisions scrutinized by the pay czar.
With their $6 million bonuses being backed by the government, the executives for Fanny and Freddie have no incentive to perform better.
In 2009 the credit lines for each of them were already increased from $100 billion to over $200 billion, and now they are requesting to have that amount doubled again to total more than $800 billion, which is backed only by our governments willingness to pay the interest, with taxpayer dollars. Fannie so far has received $60 billion, Freddie $51 billion from taxpayers.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac finance mortgages by buying them from lenders and selling them to investors. By guaranteeing or owning nearly half of all American home loans, Fannie and Freddie are positioned right in the middle of the housing market failure. Not to mention that their balance sheets still conceal 100’s of billion of dollars of securitizations that are not yet counted.
Under the Treasury’s new flexible financing formula, Fannie and Freddie get more taxpayer support based on a formula that takes into account how much each company loses in a quarter. Even after the companies were forced into conservatorship, the Obama administration has continued to use them as tools to promote the administration’s efforts to keep some air in the rapidly deflating housing bubble.
As a taxpayer, you are left to wonder why all of your money is being spent on a secret bailout for federal corporations whose portfolios only continue to decline in value, by our President whose plans to stop or slow foreclosure have been an abject failure.
The author enjoys writing articles about boise real estate & boise idaho homes for sale. To learn more about these topics click on the links above!