Free Republic

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders. The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring. Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest...

Andrew Cuomo and Fannie and Freddie How the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history gave birth to the mortgage crisis By Wayne Barrett ...... http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-08-05/news/how-andrew-cuomo-gave-birth-to-the-crisis-at-fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac/ There are as many starting points for the mortgage meltdown as there are fears about how far it has yet to go, but one decisive point of departure is the final years of the Clinton administration, when a kid from Queens without any real banking or real-estate experience was the only man in Washington with the power to regulate the giants of home finance, the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) and the Federal...

UPDATE VIDEO BACK UP...PLEASE MAKE COPIES video unearthed CEO of Fannie Mae telling the Democrats (specifically Barack Obama and the Congressional Black Caucus) that they are the "Family" the "Conscience" of Fannie Mae.

Taxpayers are now on the hook for as much as $200 billion to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and if you want to know why, look no further than the rapid response to this bailout from House baron Barney Frank. Asked about Treasury's modest bailout condition that the companies reduce the size of their high-risk mortgage-backed securities (MBS) portfolios starting in 2010, Mr. Frank was quoted on Monday as saying, "Good luck on that," and that it would never happen. There you have the Fannie Mae problem in profile. Mr. Frank wants you to pick up the tab for...

After too many years tilting at Washington's windmills, there are few subjects left that can trigger my feelings of outrage. Fannie Mae is one of them. The White House is hardly in a position to provide leadership since presidents Bush and Clinton have significant responsibility for what went wrong. They appointed board members at Fannie and Freddie, reflecting their unique status. The failure of that system is obvious. The White House traditionally treated appointments to the boards as political plums: not as cushy as, say, being named ambassador to the Vatican but as nice a job as you can get...

...[I]nvestigators have uncovered even more accounting "irregularities" -- including overvaluation of assets, attempts to hide derivatives losses and the possible improper use of tax credits.... Which brings us to Mr. Oxley, the House Financial Services Chairman who is pressing a "reform" for Fannie and its sibling, Freddie Mac, that fails to address their core financial risks. His bill does nothing to reduce their huge portfolios of mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) and the derivatives they use to hedge those portfolios. Reducing their MBSs would dent their profitability. But a meltdown in their black-box hedging operations could have far worse consequences, and the...

For the list of worst Congressional legislation ever, we have a new candidate: last month's debacle in the House Financial Services Committee on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In the name of reforming these "government-sponsored" mortgage giants, the Members voted to make them even more financially dangerous, while grabbing a chunk of their profits for political payola to boot. Chairman Mike Oxley and friends voted to create a new "affordable housing fund" to the tune of $600 million or more a year. Already facing deserved criticism for being under-capitalized, Fannie and Freddie would have to dole out 5% of their...

Why isn't TV news giving the Fannie Mae scandals the same level of coverage that it gave to Enron? Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage association, has been battling a mounting scandal since last year. It has accounting errors of about $11 billion. That's more than 19 times larger than Enron's $567 million error. Fannie faces a Justice Department inquiry, an SEC investigation and an Office of Federal Housing Enterprise complaint. The mess has caused the departure of CEO Franklin Raines and several other top executives. And Fannie Mae stock has dropped roughly 30 percent, from nearly $80 a share to...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 - Fannie Mae, the housing-finance giant, for years has fended off critics who contend that the company is too big, too powerful and too risky. But the Securities and Exchange Commission's Wednesday ruling, that Fannie Mae had seriously breached accounting rules, could touch off a chain reaction that results in stricter government controls, legislation limiting its growth and possibly even a change in top management. Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike demanded on Thursday that senior executives, including the chief executive, Franklin D. Raines, return tens of millions of dollars in bonuses and other compensation that they had...

...Here's a case of misplaced moral outrage if we've ever seen one. Mr. Franks is mad about the salaries when he really should be mad at the rigged political game that has made them possible. Fannie's regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, has reported that Fannie has been cooking its books. Add that to the increasing evidence that Fannie has been ignoring its mission to provide affordable housing, and we wonder if Mr. Frank doesn't need an eye checkup.... Maxine Waters (D., California) cooed all over Mr. Raines, and Clay Lacy (D., Missouri) played the race card by...