Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac to delist shares from NYSE (Breaking)

WaPo/AP ^ | 6/16/2010

[SonOfDarkSkies]

Government-sponsored mortgage purchasers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac plan to delist their shares from the New York Stock Exchange.

[azkathy]

Post #38

[dools007]

Anyone want to bet on Wall Street will opening up tomorrow?

[SonOfDarkSkies]

I liquidated my family's holdings earlier in the year.

Until the markets have digested the indigestible lump that is Obama, I have decided to sit on the sidelines.

I am only one voice amongst an entire family of savvy investors...my family decided unanimously to follow my advice.

Many years on Wall St is insufficient preparation for investing in the Obama Markets!

[SatinDoll]

What this means is the Democrats are keeping Fanni Mae and Freddie Mac alive. It will be up to the Republicans in Congress next year to kill off Fannie and Freddie.

I love a good cremation!

[Psycho_Bunny]

I recall the WSJ screaming in the 90s that Raines was a thief and Fannie would crush the economy in 10 years or so.

[naturalborn]

I lost 20,000 to FNMA on a refinance.

FNMA enticed me with a lower rate but then they started flying in inspectors from all over the country just looking for problems with my property. I spent three months dealing with their baloney until I called the local bank who had the deal done within a week.

That was an expensive lesson in government integrity.

[Alex Murphy]

Taking them private, are they?

[OneWingedShark]

>If they would hold these people accountable it would a start. I know they are being bribed and stealing us blind.

In all honesty, I don’t see that happening until/unless there is bloodshed.

[OneWingedShark]

Except that the Romulans in the Original series were pretty cool... TNG (Especially that horrid movie) completely ruined them. {”Remans”... gah! Since when do you have a combination slave race and warrior race?}

[happygrl]

Franklin Raines should spend the rest of his life in the cell next to Bernie madoff.

Jamie Gorelick should be on the other side.

[EyeGuy]

“If they go belly up, police and teacher retirements are gone, college trusts are gone, more big financial institutions would be crushed...”

####

I have ALREADY lost ~90% of the value of my FNMA holdings due to the racist, and fiscally berserk machinations of the Democrat Party and one felonious Franklin Raines.

I’m not sure what investment difference it would make to those institituions and pensions if the value goes to zero. We are almost there now.

[happygrl]

Great post.

I second that. I feel a Diana Rigg moment coming on.

[freekitty]

There doesn’t have to bloodshed. That’s a mindset the democrats want us to believe.

[stephenjohnbanker]

;-)

[M-cubed]

Great video isn't it!.....Should be played on an endless loop at every Tea-party gathering..... Every town hall meeting....Every political rally....On the senate floor!!!

It was the basis of the economic collapse of the Nation...
If the banks had to eat their own cooking, how many bad loans would they have had?...But NO!
The Government stepped in, forced them to make bad loans,(remember redlining?),and with a wink and a nod, sliced them and diced them ‘till nobody knew who “ACTUALLY” held the real note

[dools007]

In May of 2009 I got rid of my dog stocks and bought into gold and silver. My remaining stocks are paying dividends or holding their own.

It amazes when I hear the financial ANALysts prattle on as though nothing has changed in the stock market since Onada usurped the WH. It amazes me even more when otherwise intelligent people I know pretend the same thing. I guess they’re in denial.

The stock market is a financial mechanism that is not likely to go away—ever. It’s been around at least since the British East India Co. Even China has a stock market.

But, as you say, Onada and his gang of angry commies must go before Wall Street heals itself. I include in this group the left coopted financial leadership.

[ETL]

If the banks had to eat their own cooking, how many bad loans would they have had?...But NO! The Government stepped in, forced them to make bad loans

Don't forget Obama's ACORN...

"ACORN recognized very early the opportunity presented by the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977. As Stanley Kurtz has reported, ACORN proudly touted “affirmative action” lending and pressured banks to make subprime loans. Madeline Talbott, a Chicago ACORN leader, boasted of “dragging banks kicking and screaming” into dubious loans. And, as Sol Stern reported in City Journal, ACORN also found a remunerative niche as an “advisor” to banks seeking regulatory approval. “Thus we have J.P. Morgan & Co., the legatee of the man who once symbolized for many all that was supposedly evil about American capitalism, suddenly donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to ACORN.” Is this a great country or what? As conservative community activist Robert Woodson put it, “The same corporations that pay ransom to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton pay ransom to ACORN.” ..."

http://article.nationalreview.com/373054/guilty-party/mona-charen

[ETL]

Thomas Sowell

Bailout Politics: The Congressional Dems who enabled this crisis are now being trusted to fix it?

September 30, 2008

Nothing could more painfully demonstrate what is wrong with Congress than the current financial crisis.

Among the Congressional “leaders” invited to the White House to devise a bailout “solution” are the very people who have for years created the risks that have now come home to roost.

Five years ago[2003], Barney Frank vouched for the “soundness” of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and said “I do not see” any “possibility of serious financial losses to the treasury.”

Moreover, he said that the federal government has “probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing.”

Earlier this year, Senator Christopher Dodd praised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for “riding to the rescue” when other financial institutions were cutting back on mortgage loans. He too said that they “need to do more” to help subprime borrowers get better loans.

In other words, Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default.

The idea that politicians can assess risks better than people who have spent their whole careers assessing risks should have been so obviously absurd that no one would take it seriously.

But the magic words “affordable housing” and the ugly word “redlining” led to politicians directing where loans and investments should go, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and various other coercions and threats.

The roots of this problem go back many years, but since the crisis to which all this led happened on George W. Bush’s watch, that is enough for those who think in terms of talking points, without wanting to be confused by the facts.

In reality, President Bush tried unsuccessfully, years ago, to get Congress to create some regulatory agency to oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

N. Gregory Mankiw, his Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, warned in February 2004 that expecting a government bailout if things go wrong “creates an incentive for a company to take on risk and enjoy the associated increase in return.”

Since risky investments usually pay more than safer investments, the incentive is for a government-supported enterprise to take bigger risks, since they get more profit if the risks pay off and the taxpayers get stuck with the losses if not.

The government does not guarantee Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, but the widespread assumption has been that the government would step in with a bailout to prevent chaos in financial markets.

Alan Greenspan, then head of the Federal Reserve System, made the same point in testifying before Congress in February 2004. He said: “The Federal Reserve is concerned” that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were using this implicit reliance on a government bailout in a crisis to take more risks, in order to “multiply the profitability of subsidized debt.”

Chairman Greenspan added his voice to those urging Congress to create a “regulator with authority on a par with that of banking regulators” to reduce the riskiness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a riskiness ultimately borne by the taxpayers.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do not deserve to be bailed out, but neither do workers, families and businesses deserve to be put through the economic wringer by a collapse of credit markets, such as occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Neither do the voters deserve to be deceived on the eve of an election by the notion that this is a failure of free markets that should be replaced by political micro-managing.

If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were free market institutions they could not have gotten away with their risky financial practices because no one would have bought their securities without the implicit assumption that the politicians would bail them out.

It would be better if no such government-supported enterprises had been created in the first place and mortgages were in fact left to the free market. This bailout creates the expectation of future bailouts.

Phasing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would make much more sense than letting politicians play politics with them again, with the risk and expense being again loaded onto the taxpayers.

— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

http://article.nationalreview.com/373060/bailout-politics/thomas-sowell

[I_be_tc]

Later

[LomanBill]

>>but what does this article mean?

That it would be a good idea to learn to grow potatoes.... and teach your neighbors to do likewise - so they don’t eat you when TSHTF?