Posted on 03/03/2009 6:52:19 AM PST by GOPGuide
Despite assurances that the takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be temporary, the giant mortgage companies will most likely never fully return to private hands, lawmakers and company executives are beginning to quietly acknowledge.
The possibility that these companies — which together touch over half of all mortgages in the United States — could remain under tight government control is shaping the broader debate over the future of the financial industry. The worry is that if the government cannot or will not extricate itself from Fannie and Freddie, it will face similar problems should it eventually nationalize some large banks.
The lesson, many fear, is that a takeover so hobbles a company’s finances and decision making that independence may be nearly impossible.
In the last six weeks alone, the Obama administration has essentially transformed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into arms of the federal government. Regulators have ordered the companies to oversee a vast new mortgage modification program, to buy greater numbers of loans, to refinance millions of at-risk homeowners and to loosen internal policies so they can work with more questionable borrowers.
snip
Lawmakers have given the companies access to as much as $400 billion in taxpayer dollars, a sum more than twice as large as the pledges to Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, General Motors, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley combined.
Regulators defend those actions as essential to battling the economic crisis. Indeed, Fannie and Freddie are basically the only lubricants in the housing market at this point.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
When that woman said she voted for O because he would pay her mortgage, she wasn’t kidding!
here comes the UASS - Union of American Socialist States following in the footsteps of the USSR.
Franklin “Reins”?.............................
Is Franklin or Jamie giving their bonuses back?
“never fully return to private hands”
So what’s new, it never was “fully” in private hands.
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