I was curious, as this is the biggest of the big:
January 27, 2011
Bill to Make Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Subject to FOIA Introduced
The Hill reports that Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Ut) has introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to make Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac subject to the FOIA. Previously, these two entities were not subject to the FOIA because while they were created by the government, they weren't technically government entities. Currently, they are in receivership and the question of their current FOIA status is up in the air with a number of lawsuits on that question pending.
I strongly believe that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be subject to the FOIA -- as well as similar organizations like the Public Corporation Accounting Oversight Board ("PCAOB"). Hopefully, this will received Democratic support in the House and will have a chance to succeed in the Senate.
http://thefoiablog.typepad.com/the_foia_blog/2011/01/bill-to-make-fannie-mae-freddie-mac-subject-to-foia-introduced.htmlFannie Mae Seeks Another Government Bailout
By Zachery Kouwe
10 May 2010 at 5:44 PM
Fannie Mae is asking for another $8.4 billion from the government to cover losses on bad mortgages after reporting a dismal first-quarter loss of $13 billion.
If fulfilled, the new request will bring Fannie’s total bailout package to $83.6 billion, nearly double the size of what the Treasury injected into Citigroup and Bank of America from the TARP program in Sept. 2008.
Late last year, the Obama administration increased its pledge to cover losses at Fannie and Freddie Mac past 2012 and did away with a $400 billion cap on aid.
http://dealbreaker.com/2010/05/fannie-mae-seeks-another-government-bailout/Fannie-Freddie Fix at $160 Billion With $1 Trillion Worst Case
By Lorraine Woellert and John Gittelsohn - Jun 13, 2010 4:00 PM PT
The cost of fixing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage companies that last year bought or guaranteed three-quarters of all U.S. home loans, will be at least $160 billion and could grow to as much as $1 trillion after the biggest bailout in American history.
Fannie and Freddie, now 80 percent owned by U.S. taxpayers, already have drawn $145 billion from an unlimited line of government credit granted to ensure that home buyers can get loans while the private housing-finance industry is moribund. That surpasses the amount spent on rescues of American International Group Inc., General Motors Co. or Citigroup Inc., which have begun repaying their debts.
“It is the mother of all bailouts,” said Edward Pinto, a former chief credit officer at Fannie Mae, who is now a consultant to the mortgage-finance industry...
...Whatever the fix, the money spent will not be recovered, said Alex Pollock, a former president of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago who is now a fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute.
“It doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do, Fannie and Freddie will cost a lot of money,” Pollock said. “The money is already lost. There’s an attempt to try to avert your eyes.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Lorraine Woellert in Washington at lwoellert@bloomberg.net; John Gittelsohn in New York at johngitt@bloomberg.net.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-13/fannie-freddie-fix-expands-to-160-billion-with-worst-case-at-1-trillion.html5 Trillion More Dollars To Fix Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac???
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have become gigantic financial black holes that the U.S. government endlessly pours massive quantities of money into. Unfortunately, if the U.S. government did allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to totally implode, both the mortgage industry and the housing industry in the United States would completely collapse. So essentially the U.S. government finds itself between a rock and a hard place. Prior to the financial crisis of the last few years, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were profit-seeking private corporations that also had a government-chartered mission of expanding home ownership in America. But now that they have been officially taken over by the U.S. government, they have become gigantic bottomless money pits. It is hard to even describe just how much of a mess Fannie and Freddie are in. However, the unprecedented intervention by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the mortgage market over the past couple of years has been about the only thing that has kept it from plunging into absolute chaos. So what does the future hold for Fannie Mae and for Freddie Mac? Well, according to one estimate, it could take another 5 trillion dollars to "fix" Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac.
Yes, you read the correctly. According to an article in the Christian Science Monitor, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are facing $5 trillion dollars in liabilities that the federal government is going to have to deal with one way or another....
An exit strategy could involve adding Fannie and Freddie's roughly $5 trillion in obligations, in effect, to a federal balance sheet that already includes $13.3 trillion in federal government debts. The GSE obligations would be a different animal, because those liabilities would need to be covered by taxpayers only if things went bad in the housing market.
It is hard to even put into words how much money that is. If you were alive when Jesus was born, and you spent one million dollars every single day since then, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now...
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/5-trillion-more-dollars-to-fix-fannie-mae-and-freddie-macFannie and Freddie phase-out plan due
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The Obama administration will issue a proposal later this week recommending the gradual elimination of government-sponsored mortgage backers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a White House official said Wednesday.
The highly-anticipated "white paper," which is expected to be released Friday, will include three different options for reducing the role government plays in the mortgage market, the official said.
While the paper would mark an important development in the debate over what to do with Fannie and Freddie, a final decision by Congress is not expected any time soon.
After being rescued by the government in 2008, Fannie and Freddie have presented a major conundrum for policymakers in Washington...
http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/09/news/economy/fannie_freddie_phase_out/index.htm
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