Originally Posted By DDMAN26 <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/fannie-mae-taps-7-8-billion-treasury-losses-220618641.html" target="_blank">http://news.yahoo.com/fannie-m...641.html</a> F-Them
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom They also want to award their top 10 executives $13 Million in bonuses despite the fact the US Federal Government has bailed them out $170 Billion so far ( not including this latest bailout request ). <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/09/us-usa-housing-bonuses-idUSTRE7A86R020111109" target="_blank">http://www.reuters.com/article...20111109</a>
Originally Posted By gadzuux They want the funding to keep americans in their homes and prevent foreclosures. F them too?
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 The problem is we already bailed them out once. There has been some serious mismanagement in that organization. And giving your execs bonuses, sorry you lose that right to get any money from the taxpayers.
Originally Posted By gadzuux So because you're unhappy with the management of these federal agencies, that's just tough luck for those millions of americans who hold mortgages that are higher than the actual value of their homes. As pointed out in the debate last night, these two agencies hold some portion of the mortgage for almost 90% of american homes. I wouldn't be so cavalier about dismissing this responsibility because you're mad at the leadership. Or maybe you support Ron Paul's position in which both agencies should just be dissolved altogether. And hey, what do we need with teachers, police, doctors, firefighters, roads, bridges, hospitals, air traffic controllers ... the government is corrupt - let's just tear it all down. The GOP position in a nutshell.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/business/fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac-still-the-socialites.html" target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10...tes.html</a> Fannie and Freddie, Still the Socialites By GRETCHEN MORGENSON Published: October 15, 2011 THE mortgage business is moribund. New loans are down. New foreclosures are up. But why let a little sorry news get in the way of a good party? Last week, almost 3,000 people descended on the Hyatt Regency in Chicago for the 98th annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association. The price of admission: about $1,000 a head. But for that grand, you got to hear the band Chicago play hits from the ’70s. And David Axelrod and Jeb Bush give speeches. And experts discuss things like demographics, the politics of housing and the future of the mortgage industry, according to a flier for the event. “Gather the information you need to help your business and our industry drive change,” the pitch went. The city of Chicago was no doubt grateful for the conventioneers’ dollars. Besides, Mayor Rahm Emanuel knows something about this industry: he used to be a director at the mortgage giant Freddie Mac. Nothing wrong with a bit of schmoozing. But it might seem jarring that Freddie, which was rescued by Washington and today exists at the pleasure of taxpayers, paid $80,000 to become a “platinum” sponsor of this shindig. Fannie Mae, that other ward of the state, paid $60,000 to become a “gold” sponsor. Keep in mind that taxpayers bailed out Fannie and Freddie to the tune of about $150 billion. Today, Fannie and Freddie are about the only games in mortgage town. Yes, banks make loans, but more often than not they hand them off to one of the two. So it’s a mystery why Fannie and Freddie needed to help foot the bill for the gathering. Freddie’s companions in the platinum sponsor list make for interesting reading. One was the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, or MERS, which has repeatedly foreclosed on troubled homeowners and made a hash of the nation’s real estate records. Another was Lender Processing Services of Florida, which made robo-signing a household word. MERS and Lender Processing Services are at the center of the foreclosure crisis. Why would Freddie keep such company? Perhaps more disturbing is that Fannie and Freddie sent an army of their own to Chicago: 87 people in all. According to a list of registrants, that’s more than hailed from the Mortgage Bankers Association (60 people), Bank of America (58), Wells Fargo (54) and JPMorgan Chase (24). Only Lender Processing Services had more — 91 — than Fannie and Freddie. (Perhaps they robo-signed their registrations.) The C.E.O.’s of Fannie and Freddie were conference headliners and gave presentations. But Freddie also sent 15 vice presidents and 14 directors from various units. Fannie’s list included 12 vice presidents, 12 unit directors and three events managers. I asked Fannie and Freddie what they got out of sending all of these people to Chicago. Representatives of both said participation was an efficient use of taxpayer dollars because it allowed their employees to hold crucial meetings with hundreds of customers to discuss ways to address the housing crisis. Fannie Mae’s spokeswoman, Amy Bonitatibus, added that it has “significantly reduced sponsorship and support of events and industry-related conferences.” Representative Randy Neugebauer, the Texas Republican who heads the oversight and investigations subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee, said he was disturbed by the turnout from Fannie and Freddie. It reflected a troubling “business as usual” approach by the mortgage giants, he said. “They don’t act like companies that have had a huge infusion of taxpayer money,” he told me. “Why do they feel the need to go out and spend the money for networking when they have all of the mortgage market in its entirety?” Trying to tally the costs borne by the taxpayers for the four-day event in Chicago, Mr. Neugebauer sent a letter last week to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, conservator for Fannie and Freddie. “I am concerned that the expenditures that Freddie and Fannie made in connection with the conference bear no relation to furthering the actual purposes of the conservatorship,”he wrote. He requested a rundown of amounts paid by the companies to cover travel, lodging, entertainment and sponsorship. He also asked for details about whether Fannie and Freddie had consulted with the agency beforehand about sponsoring and attending the conference. The agency was asked to respond within a week. ”We’re going to really look through their entire budget and see if we can see signs where they are tightening their belt,” Mr. Neugebauer said, referring to Fannie and Freddie. “The American people are tightening their belts, businesses all over the country are tightening their belts. These entities can certainly do the same.”
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Fannie and Freddie are nowhere near as culpable in the mortgage meltdown as right-wingers typically believe (partly so, but ultimately minor players in terms of culpability; they didn't originate most of those loans even though they got saddled with them), but there's no question their CEO's and other top dogs have been tone deaf in the aftermath. And they shouldn't be received humongous bonuses any more than the bank execs should be.
Originally Posted By gadzuux Conservatives have been fingerpointing at fannie and freddie since the outset of the mortgage crisis in an attempt to divert attention from where the responsibility primarily lies - with the brokers who combined these toxic mortgages with good-pay mortgages and sold them in bundles, with no way for the purchasers to separate the wheat from the chaff. Everybody (except the sellers) got burned. And the sellers knew exactly what they were doing, made handsome profits, and were never called into accountability. This was made possible by the deregulation of the financial markets, mostly pushed through by the republican party. And yet - to this very day - they still decry financial regulation and campaign on further deregulation of the markets. I'm not sure why this gains any traction with conservatives, but it does. Just like they favor tax breaks for the wealthy, even though they'll never be wealthy. Or get enthusiastic over Cain's 999 plan, which includes a national sales tax, ON TOP of whatever state taxes they currently pay. There's no accounting for why conservatives believe what they do - it defies common sense.
Originally Posted By HongKongFoooy 13 million in bonuses?1?! who are these leeches of society? ya, f-them
Originally Posted By HongKongFoooy 13 million in bonuses?1?! who are these leeches of society? ya, f-them
Originally Posted By mawnck >>that's just tough luck for those millions of americans who hold mortgages that are higher than the actual value of their homes.<< See, this is why I guess I can never call myself a true liberal. Because yes, it is. Do you expect to ring up your credit card company and refuse to pay the bill because that wide screen TV you charged last year and haven't paid off yet is no longer worth what you paid for it? You're proposing the same thing, only with a house. This is how it works (or used to): the bank loses the money, the people lose the house ... and they go live somewhere they can afford. That's how it's supposed to work. The solution to this is not more unfairness. It's the prosecution of those who committed fraud in granting these ridiculous home loans. But no, these people should not get to keep a house they can't pay for.
Originally Posted By gadzuux You're missing the problem. The issue isn't people who can't afford the mortgages they agreed to, but that the value of the their home has tanked, through no fault or action of their own. They may be employed, they may have been faithfully paying their mortgage for ten years or more, but now the value of the mortgage is greater than the value of the home. That's different than people defaulting on loans they agreed to.
Originally Posted By HongKongFoooy ###that the value of the their home has tanked, through no fault or action of their own.### i guess someone could say that about those who put money in a stock account and 401's that lost money. are we now supposed to bail them out too? of course not.
Originally Posted By andyll <<i guess someone could say that about those who put money in a stock account and 401's that lost money. are we now supposed to bail them out too? of course not.>> Bailing out Frannie is not bailing out the homeowners. It is bailing out the companies/investors that bought MBSs from frannie. This is the Bush bailout that keeps giving that nobody talks about. Once Bush guaranteed that Frannie would pay off all loans the government has been on the hook for over a trillion dollars that will never be returned.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_takeover_of_Fannie_Mae_and_Freddie_Mac" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...ddie_Mac</a> The GSE business model faces inherent conflicts due its combination of government mission and private ownership. According to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank: "The government mission required them to keep mortgage interest rates low and to increase their support for affordable housing. Their shareholder ownership, however, required them to fight increases in their capital requirements and regulation that would raise their costs and reduce their risk-taking and profitability. But there were two other parties—Congress and the taxpayers—that also had a stake in the choices that Fannie and Freddie made. Congress got some benefits in the form of political support from the GSEs' ability to hold down mortgage rates, but it garnered even more political benefits from GSE support for affordable housing." In 2003, the Bush Administration sought to create a new agency, replacing the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, to oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In 1992 in the wake of the Savings and Loan crisis, and over concern similar lending problems would develop, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight was created as part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. While Senate and House leaders voiced their intention to bring about the needed legislation, no reform bills materialized. A Senate reform bill introduced by Senator John Corzine (D-NJ) (S.1656) never made it out of the 21-member (10D/11R) Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee.[17] At the time members of the 108th congress expressed faith in the solvency of Fannie and Freddie. Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA), for example, described them as "not facing any kind of financial crisis." In 2005, the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act, sponsored by Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and co-sponsored by Senators Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), John McCain (R-AZ) and John Sununu (R-NH)[1], would have increased government oversight of loans given by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Like the 2003 bill, it also died in the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, this time in the 109th Congress. A full and accurate record of the congressional attempts to regulate the housing GSEs is given in the Congressional record prepared in 2005. Gerald P. O'Driscoll, the former vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, stated that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had become classic examples of crony capitalism. Government backing let Fannie and Freddie dominate the mortgage-underwriting. They returned some of the profits to the politicians, sometimes directly, as campaign funds, and sometimes as "contributions to favored constituents."
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPSDnGMzIdo" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...DnGMzIdo</a> Barney Frank lieing: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UZ9l_AxKjA&feature=related" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...=related</a> Maxine Waters asking that Freddie and Fannie NOT be regulated: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTbIb75JdwY&feature=related" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...=related</a>
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom Barney Frank saying Fannie and Freddie are solvent! <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvbv81z2UKg&feature=related" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...=related</a> Nancy Pelosi blaming Republicans for the lack of regulation of Fannie and Freddie. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxMInSfanqg" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...InSfanqg</a>
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom How the Democrats caused the Housing financial crisis: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr1M1T2Y314&feature=related" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...=related</a>
Originally Posted By mawnck Oooo! YouTube videos! Well, I'll just shuddup now, cause I'm totally convinced!
