On Demand
Rescuing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae
Monday, July 14, 2008
Adam Davidson, NPR correspondent for international business and economics, updates us on the financial troubles facing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
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Comments
Finally I can pay my mortgage again -- and all thanks to the US government!
By the way, when are they sending out those monthly stimulus checks? Another mortgage payment almost due...
Smidely dude -- we TOTALLY agree!
Let's all cheer another spin down the drain!
We have nearly completely privatized all profit, socialized all risk; on all levels, personal, corporate, and governmental.
I feel proud.
Schumer's fault!
Why should we bail these banks? This is ridiculous. 30 years of Raganomics coming home to roost.
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship." attributed to Alexander Tytler, 1747-1813
People may know IndyMac better as Countrywide (Angelo Mozilo, etc.)
It was founded as Countrywide Mortgage Investment (1985).
Countrywide spun off IndyMac in 1997.
thanks for the deep insight. what a mess the markets would be in without it.
Ask the guest, how will this affect people's mortgages?
When is this unstable economy going to turn around?
Is Pomeranianzdad around today? If so, see Friday's posts.
I find it difficult to follow this guy's rant...
Well let's do a little math exercise.
Fannie and Freddie together either hold or guarantee $5 trillion in mortgages.
Now here's the problem - while Fannie and Freddie are claimed to be all 80/20 full-doc loans this is in fact a lie.
In fact, a huge percentage of the loans they took on or guaranteed in the last five years were packed with fraud or serious deficiencies in underwriting in some form, whether it be appraisal fraud, claimed income fraud, LTVs as high as 100%, or all three!
So how bad could this get?
Very bad.
I believe that Fannie and Freddie have as much as half of their paper subject to loss of some form, and that paper which is out in places like California could suffer losses as high as 50%. Since this is the largest economy in the nation by far, there's no possibility that this is a "small issue."
Congress of course has been asked for a "blank check." If the market comes to the realization that this "blank check" could be as large as $900 billion, do not expect the reaction to be anything like what you have seen this morning.
Chris Dodd must have been reading Tickers, because he asked on the air this morning "Where were the cops?"
This is a quote from:
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/
Mortgages are bad. People are one illness away from losing it all, their house, cars, everything because of this system.
Since the government is bailing out Fannie and Feddie, what motivates them to be responsible in 10 years. If you keep bailing someone out, they never change.
Wow -- is your guest confused or what? The big problem with Fanny and Freddie is that they cooked the books and made bad moves (making loans of household appliances, etc.) to raise profits so the execs could collect hundreds of millions in bonuses.
Agreed - Davidson is chuckling too much and making no sense.
And we taxpayers ride to the rescue again!
This guy must be somebody's unemployed brother-in-law -- He sounds like a real jerk. Next time get a guy who knows something.
it is important to see the bipartisan nature of this deal
"conservatives" love it, as (some) get rich
"progressives" love it as they can promise "a chicken in every pot"
the system is broken ...
we need responsibility on all levels, personal, corporate, and governmental; but of course this is NEITHER party's platform!
How many more institutions can fail before the FDIC runs out of money?
@john
this is the problem; they will never run out of money; they will just print it
that is why you see inflation (there is deflation too, as credit is being "destroyed" in the market)
note that gold, energy, food all up or holding on the news...
Brian - maybe you could get Krugman in there to make sense of this.
we should all be angry
- at the press for the poor reporting
- at our incompetent Congress and Executive
there is a pattern
- after the dot.com bust
- after 911
- after the housing bubble bust
we are all encouraged to "keep shopping"!
we are told that we are still solvent and that energy prices are up due to speculation
drink the koolaid at your own peril
Why hasn't the FDIC raised the insurance deposit level of $100K for depositors. This level hasn't been increased in over 20 years. For retirees with deposits, $100k is not a significant amount and customers need more certainty for these deposits.
IndyMac was/is Countrywide?? Why has this tidbit not appeared in any reporting? Did anyone read the story on the front page of yesterday's NYT Business section about the the homeowner trying to contact someone at Countrywide to renegotiate his mortgage and the blowoff response he got from the CEO who didn't realize the message came from a customer?? Where's the follow up on that?
Wow, Adam Davidson doesn't know anything. How embarrassing! And the hubris to opine from his ignorance.
This thread is closed.
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