Freddie Mac Back With Hat In Hand

[Just Win]

One of the GSAs tat started this entire banking collapse is back again asking for a never-ending supply of money. Why was this GSA along with Fannie Mae not called before congress instead of this Goldman Sachs dog and pony show?

2004 House Committee Hearing

WASHINGTON (AFP) - – Troubled US government-backed mortgage firm Freddie Mac on Wednesday asked for an additional 10.6 billion dollars from the Treasury Department to cover losses.

Announcing a 6.7 billion dollar loss in the first quarter, Freddie Mac said it would need the new funding by June 30 this year.

The Washington-area company has already received more than 50 billion dollars in taxpayers cash to cover losses from toxic assets.

It warned that further demands would be on the way: "Freddie Mac expects to request additional draws," the firm said in a statement.

"The size and timing of such draws will be determined by a variety of factors that could adversely affect the company's net worth."

In 2008, the government pledged to ensure that Freddie Mac, and its larger sister organization Fannie Mae, kept a "positive net worth."

The deal was designed to prop up the vital US housing market from collapsing totally and pushing the economy over the precipice.

But in a sign that the US housing sector is still in difficulty, Freddie said the percentage of its loans not paid on time or in full rose to 4.13 percent in the first three months of the year.

In the final three months of last year the rate stood at 3.98 percent.

The future of Fannie and Freddie has become the latest bone of contention between Democrats who argue they must remain government-backed to aid low-income housing and Republicans who advocate their privatization.

In March, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner swatted aside pressure for a swift reform of the mortgage giants as data pointed to a still struggling real estate market.

Geithner told Congress any restructuring of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which received a 100-billion-dollar-plus government bailout at the height of the housing crisis, "must be done as part of a reform of the wider housing finance system."

Geithner argued reforms would "take several months" to develop and should only be "enacted and executed at a time of greater market stability.

[NCVol]

Wake up JW.  Freddie and Fannie are serving a similar role as AIG.  They're conduits, laundering operations, giant black holes where the bailout pass thru on their way to the rest of the banking system.  The Fed has also become a major laundering operation, funneling billions to the banks with zero interest loans, and taking off their hands over a trillion in assets (aka mortgage loans) and replacing it with treasuries.  I wonder why the Fed is so against an audit showing where their money went?  Hummmmmm..........

This is one gigantic funnel of your money to rich a$$hole banksters and crooks, and Fannie and Freddie are just one essential part. 

[Sasquatch]

This is one gigantic funnel of your money to rich a$$hole banksters and crooks, and Fannie and Freddie are just one essential part. 

So you are saying that when Obama ran on the "Hope" and "Change" mantra it was all a big lie?

[NCVol]

He was a change from the simply stunning incompetence of the Bush administration, but if you've noticed, I've been frequently critical of Obama and his economic appointments, including Larry "Eight Million Man" Summers and Timmeh "All the banksters have me on speed dial" Geithner and Obama's 30 YO chief financial cop, etc.

Rubin => Paulson => Geithner  = seemless transitions. 

Seriously, this is so typical of right wingers.  Instead of recognizing that it's the entire system that is corrupt to the core and robbing us blind in a very bipartisan fashion, people on the right like JW are being told to hate on the GSEs and poor people and evil gubment and letting the big boy banksters at GS and other places off the hook.  You THINK that might be because the puppet masters setting the agenda for Fox and the GOP are working for GS and the CEO class?  Yep!

Just a question - where is the money going?  Foreclosures are still setting records, so where is the $10B going?  Grandma and her pension.  Poor people housing in the inner city? 

The answer is the GSEs are putting a hard floor under the housing market and the mortgage debt market, and that is because if left to float where it should, 10, 20, 30% lower from these levels, the banking system - GS, JPM, CITI - collapses and we have Greece right here.  So the billions going thru Freddie and the $1.2 TRILLION that the Fed bought in mortgage debt with who knows what level of hidden losses is a frantic attempt to keep the housing bubble somewhat inflated, for the benefit of the rest of the financial system.  That money to cover "Freddie" losses is a direct benefit to all of the financial system.  Believe it. 

[Sasquatch]

Believe it. 

Oh, I believe it! And I also believed it when Bush was there. And I believed it when the democrat congress, approved by a overwhelmingly partisan vote, and Bush enacted the first bailout.

[NCVol]

That's kind of my point - what JW and the lemmings on the right are missing.  It's not partisan. 

What's frustrating as all get out is the tea PARTY gets this - the corruption isn't democrats versus republicans, it's the corrupt Fortune 100/500 CEO class versus the rest of the country.  The tea BAGGERS are useful idiots for the CEO class, and that's why THEY focus on CRA and Fannie/Freddie and poor borrowers and don't seem to notice the billions in monthly socialism for the rich going to the crooks at what we call "free market" banks. 

And I believed it when the democrat congress, approved by a overwhelmingly partisan vote, and Bush enacted the first bailout.

FWIW, that's just factually wrong.  I know the right wing propaganda machine is trying to pretend this didn't happen on their watch and blame this on the democrats in congress and letting the republics off the hook, but it's not true.  Sarah Palin supported TARP.  Glenn Beck supported TARP.  Bush and Paulson (republicans) proposed it, pushed it hard, signed it. 

Here's the Nays.  Summary - 15Rs against, 9Ds and 1I.  Alexander (R-TN) and Corker (R-TN) voted Yea.  The commie Sanders (I-VT) voted Nay.  This was a bipartisan bailout of the bankster class.  Don't let the propaganda fool you on what actually happened. 

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=2&vote=00213

Allard (R-CO)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cochran (R-MS)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dole (R-NC)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feingold (D-WI)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Johnson (D-SD)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sanders (I-VT)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Tester (D-MT)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)
Wyden (D-OR)

[Sasquatch]

Didn't the first vote fail? As I recall Pelosi had to go out and blast repubs for not voting for it.