Fannie and Freddie go bye-bye: a link recap
Debbie wrote this article on Tuesday, but I’ve been a little slow on the up-keep. If you want a recap of Fannie/Freddie bail out links because you missed the action here you go. — Morgan
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If you haven’t heard the news yet because you’re tired of hearing all the daily mortgage woes, Fannie and Freddie have joined close to 300 other mortgage companies that have imploded.
While the news wasn’t that big of a shock, media outlets around the world did have their say. Here’s a quick round-up of – some and not all – of what some of the main news outlets had to say and what we can expect in the weeks and most likely, months to come.
Bloomberg News reported: “The U.S. Treasury’s takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is aimed at keeping the companies going into 2009, while leaving the next president and Congress to decide their long-term structure.
“Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart yesterday placed the two firms in a government-operated conservatorship, ousting their chief executives and eliminating their dividends. The Treasury may purchase up to $200 billion of stock in the firms to keep them solvent…” Read more at the site.
Ml-implode.com: “The government has taken over the reins and purse strings of both mortgage giants. The American taxpayer is now on the hook for losses yet to be seen, in what many media outlets are calling “the chickens have come home to roost.”
Others like Fox writer , Ken Sweet, added that, “The U.S. government seized control of the mortgage giants Fannie Mae (FNM: 0.73, -6.31, -89.63%) and Freddie Mac (FRE: 0.88, -4.22, -82.74%) on Sunday, placing the liabilities of more than $5 trillion of mortgages onto the backs of the U.S. taxpayer …” Read the rest on the site.
Even President Bush was in high spirits and was quoted as saying: “Americans should be confident that the actions taken today will strengthen our ability to weather the housing correction and are critical to returning the economy to stronger sustained growth,” in a statement released by the White House,
Perhaps one of the best and most readable and understandable report about Freddie and Fannie came from NPR … “The U.S. government stepped in with an ambitious plan on Sunday to help rescue mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Bush administration placed the two companies into a conservatorship, replaced their CEOs and boards of directors, and announced a plan to infuse billions of dollars to prop them up as a means for reinvigorating the U.S. housing market…”
It goes on to answer typical questions for us folks who aren’t mortgage experts … but then again, if they had been experts, maybe we wouldn’t be in such a mortgage meltdown, right?
Undoubtedly, the saga will continue.
The writer, Debbie L. Sklar is a 20+year journalism veteran residing in Southern California, where she is a writer, columnist and editor for many local, regional and national publications. She will be a regular contributor to Blown Mortgage and may be reached via e-mail at DebbieSklar@cox.net.