Free Republic

full title...LETTER: Ralph Nader questions Obama administration’s ‘legal authority’ to shut out Fannie and Freddie shareholders from future profits....Political activist and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader is questioning the “legal authority” of the Obama administration’s secret decision to prevent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders from obtaining any future earnings in the government sponsored enterprises (GSE). Nader slammed the administration’s actions in a letter he sent to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, which was obtained by The Daily Caller. The administration’s decision to shut out shareholders means that the mortgage-lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which received a $189.5...

Congressional Democrats are reeling from Obamacare, Republicans are caving-in to President Obama’s budgetary demands, and the First Lady is emotionally wounded because of her husband’s flirtatious behavior in South Africa. That’s the sum total of activity in Washington, DC here at year’s end – right? Not quite. Lurking quietly in the halls of the U.S. Senate is, apparently, growing bi-partisan support for legislation that is supposed to “reform” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Yet some fear that the “Corker-Warner bill” – named for Senator John Corker (R-TN) and Senator Mark Warner (R-VA) could threaten the very existence of the 30-year...

Welcome students to my Fall 2013 Fixed-Income Securities class. Since mortgage-backed securities are a big part of the US fixed-income market, let’s start with the largest players in the market: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae is located in Washington DC and Freddie Mac is located in McLean Virginia (hence puzzling why Virginia Senator Mark Warner (Democrat) is interested in winding down both enterprises. The regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (and the Federal Home Loan Banks) is the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). And FHFA has a watchdog, the Inspector General. So the watchdog has a watchdog....

An alleged "worst case scenario" shows the FHA could lose as much as $115 Billion. Since these worst case scenarios are always famously optimistic, the best course of action would be to shut the agency down. I was quoted as saying just that by the Heartland in Congressional Report Raises Spectre of FHA Bailout. The Federal Housing Administration's (FHA) losses over the next 30 years could be much higher than originally projected, according to the findings of a congressional committee. The dismal forecast has some bracing for another taxpayer-financed bailout. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep....

A government report finds median pay for nearly 2,000 senior managers at government-controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exceeded $200,000 last year. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees the two mortgage giants, also did an inadequate job monitoring pay, according to the report released Monday from the inspector general for the FHFA. The median figure means that half the managers received salaries above $200,000 and half received less. Compensation for senior managers at the companies cost about $455 million in 2011, according to the report. Taxpayers so far have paid roughly $170 billion to rescue Fannie and Freddie, which...

Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod and his hatchet people are still yammering about GOP presidential rival Mitt Romney's overseas investments. It's time for the Romney campaign to educate voters about all the shady financial institutions embraced by Democrats right here on American soil. The fat-cat narrative attacks on Republicans won't go away by making nice with the White House -- or by relying on Beltway journalists to drop their double standards and vet the president's own bad bank entanglements. Indeed, The New York Times admitted this week that their staff and other political journalists from every major media outlet submit...

The swag hunt is on, but finding it is proving a lot harder than President Barack Obama might think. Obama signed an executive order Wednesday to promote cut costs and section seven, titled “extraneous promotional items,” states that “agencies should limit the promotional items (e.g., plaques, clothing, and commemorative items), in particular where they are not cost-effective.” The Federal Housing Finance Agency, the government regulator for Fannie and Freddie, approved $12.79 million in bonus pay after 10 executives from the two government-sponsored corporations last year met modest performance targets tied to modifying mortgages in jeopardy of foreclosure. The executives got...

So far the U.S. government has bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the tune of at least $130 billion, and perhaps as much as $1 trillion. And yet, the Obama administration continues to stonewall the release of documents that could shed light on why Fannie and Freddie failed, thereby sending the economy into a tailspin from which we have yet to recover. (Those records are housed at the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) now that Fannie and Freddie are owned and operated by the federal government.)

The CBO has a problem with the Office of Management and Budget’s calculation on the cost of the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailouts, and it’s no small calculation error. OMB has calculated the costs of the bailout at $130 billion, a number repeated on occasion by the Obama administration. By the CBO’s calculation, the cost of the bailouts reaches $317 billion, more than twice the White House estimate: In a report delivered to the House Budget Committee on June 2, the CBO said a “fair value” accounting of guaranteeing the two defunct mortgage companies – known as Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs)...

Leaning on the megabanks can pay off, if you've got a little muscle and a lot of patience. Banks had paid $21 billion through this past summer to repurchase souring home loans from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the taxpayer-backed mortgage companies, under contracts that oblige lenders or loan servicers to buy back loans that aren't up to snuff.

….Andrew Cuomo is enjoying a 70% approval rating in his first weeks as New York’s Governor is a clear example of how uninformed the manipulative media keeps us. If New York’s Republicans had fielded a genuine candidate in last November’s Gubernatorial Election we would have learned more about the gross culpability of now Governor Andrew Cuomo in the Fannie/Freddie mortgage collapses. Make no mistake the numbers are clear and they point directly to Cuomo and former Attorney General Janet Reno. While Cuomo was the totally unqualified HUD Secretary during the period 1997 to 2001, he threatened the managers of Fannie...

The housing recovery has stalled, but the gravy train rolls on for the government-appointed saviors of the housing market, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The top executives of the taxpayer-backed companies stand to make millions of dollars in salary, deferred pay and long-term incentive awards for 2010 – including substantial sums that are performance-based, at least in name. Fannie (FNMA) CEO Michael Williams and Freddie (FMCC) chief Charles Haldeman each stand to make some $6 million this year, going by company filings that broadly outline 2009 pay and 2010 guidelines. Using the same data and assuming no one got a...

It is not difficult to deprive the vast majority of independent thought.[i] Does anyone remember what happened on Christmas Eve last year? In one of the most expensive Christmas presents ever, the government removed the $400 billion limit on their Fannie and Freddie guaranty. This act increased taxpayer liabilities by six trillion dollars; however, the news was lost in the holiday cheer. This is one instance in a broader campaign to manipulate the public perception, gradually depriving us of independent thought. Consider another example: what news story broke on April 16, 2010? Most of us would say the SEC's lawsuit...

Last week I interviewed an investor who buys foreclosed properties and rents them out long-term for solid returns. He claims that's the only way to right the housing market — get long-term investors to eat up the excess inventory. The biggest roadblock, however, is credit. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac both limit the number of investor mortgages. Multiple sources now tell me that the Administration, specifically over at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is considering ways to get more investors into the housing market, possibly with the help of Fannie and Freddie. HUD would not confirm that, but...

An institutionalized system of skewed incentives allowed Wall Street bankers and other corporate executives to gamble with America's wealth and then get away largely scot-free after the house of cards came tumbling down, plunging the U.S. into the worst economic crisis in decades and destroying trillions of dollars of wealth worldwide. That's the analysis of Joseph Stiglitz, an internationally renowned economist and winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics. (His latest book, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, is just out in paperback.) During a wide-ranging interview with DailyFinance at AOL headquarters in New...

Call this good news/bad news for Barney Frank in his fight to hold onto his job in Massachusetts’ 4th CD. The Boston Globe reports that Frank has a 13-point lead — but only gets 46% of the vote in a two-way race, 46-33. With a week to go before voting, Frank’s inability to get a majority may reveal a serious problem, and the Globe notes that enthusiasm may be that problem (via Jim Geraghty): US Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Newton, leads his Republican challenger, Sean Bielat, by 13 percentage points among likely voters in the Fourth Congressional District. In...

MELROSE — With New Jersey Governor Christopher J. Christie offering a blueprint for GOP victory, Republican Charles D. Baker brought 800 chanting supporters to their feet yesterday as he promised to replicate Christie’s victories in Massachusetts. In one of Baker’s most energetic events to date, Christie regaled the crowd at Melrose City Memorial Hall with stories of his election win over an incumbent in a three-way race last year and the confrontations with the Legislature over taxes and spending that followed, recounting it all with the gusto and bravado of a storyteller at a tavern. He playfully threatened to “go...

A new Boston Globe poll puts Barney Frank ahead of his GOP challenger, Sean Bielat, by a 46 to 33 percent margin. That may sound like good news for the incumbent, until you consider that Frank, who was first elected in 1980, has never won a general election by fewer than 20 points -- and that he's notched at least 64 percent of the vote in every race since 1990. It's not hard to see what's going on here. As I wrote back in January, when Scott Brown knocked off Martha Coakley, Massachusetts is a perfect example of how the...

Activists Uncover Foreclosure Scandal Shattered Dreams: Regular folks discover irregularities

President Barack Obama boldly proclaims, "The buck stops here!" But, whenever his policies are criticized, he acts as if the buck stopped with George W. Bush. The party line that we are likely to be hearing from now until the November elections is that Obama "inherited" the big federal budget deficits and that he has to "clean up the mess" left in the economy by the Republicans. This may convince those who want to be convinced, but it will not stand up under scrutiny. No President of the United States can create either a budget deficit or a budget surplus....