Nov 10

Consider this:

- Fannie Mae Knew About Toxic Mortgages in 2003!

- Former Assistant Secretary OF Housing Catherine Austin Fitts: ‘It’s Time to Bring Our Mortgages Home’

- 97 Percent Of All US Mortgages Are Backed By The Government

- Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac Worst Case Scenario Is $1 Trillion!

- Tickerguy On Dylan Ratigan Show – Massive Fraud At The Highest Levels!

- Report: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Bailouts Could Hit $363 Billion

- Bank of America: Thrilled to Pay $3 Billion Penalty – Freddie Mac Putbacks Resolved for 1¢ on $

- US Taxpayers on Hook for $5 Trillion of Fannie, Freddie Debt … No Matter What Barney Frank Says

- Obama Administration Using Accounting Gimmicks That Would Make Enron ‘Blush,’ Says Republican Lawmaker


- Fannie Mae loss widens, asks taxpayers for $7.8B (AP, Nov 8, 2011):

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mortgage giant Fannie Mae is asking the federal government for $7.8 billion in aid to cover its losses in the July-September quarter.

The government-controlled company said Tuesday that it lost $7.6 billion in the third quarter. Low mortgage rates reduced profits and declining home prices caused more defaults on loans it had guaranteed.

The government rescued Fannie Mae and sibling company Freddie Mac in September 2008 to cover their losses on soured mortgage loans. Since then, a federal regulator has controlled their financial decisions.

Taxpayers have spent about $169 billion to rescue Fannie and Freddie, the most expensive bailout of the 2008 financial crisis. The government estimates that figure could reach up $220 billion to support the companies through 2014 after subtracting dividend payments.

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Oct 28

Flashback.



YouTube Added: 08.06.2011

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Oct 08

- Could they have stopped the credit crunch? Fannie Mae knew about dodgy mortgages in 2003, says report (Daily Mail, Oct. 4, 2011):

Mortgage giant Fannie Mae knew about allegations of improper foreclosure practices by law firms as early as 2003 but did not act to stop them, a government watchdog has said.

But it wasn’t until mid-2010 before the company’s overseer began to scrutinise the conduct of some of the law firms when news reports emerged of dubious practices, a report revealed today.

An unnamed shareholder warned Fannie Mae of alleged foreclosure abuses in 2003, the inspector general of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) said in the report.

Fannie Mae responded by hiring a law firm to investigate the claims in 2005, which reported it had found foreclosure attorneys in Florida ‘routinely filing false pleadings and affidavits’ the following year.

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Oct 03

Flashback:

- ‘Welcome to the Recovery’: Why Another 11 Million Mortgages Will Go Bad

- Welcome to the Recovery (New York Times, by Timothy Geithner, August 2, 2010)


- If it doesn’t do something about its underwater mortgages, America could sink without trace (Guardian, Oct. 2 2011):

Stimulating the economy is all very well in the short term. But the national legacy of unpayable property debt will weigh the US down for years

It’s now more than six years since Alan Greenspan, in the days when he was still known as the “maestro” of the world economy, conceded that there might be a little “froth”, perhaps even a few “local bubbles”, in the American housing market.

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Sep 05

Recommended ‘extensive roundup’ here:

- Full-Blown Civil War Erupts On Wall Street: As Reality Finally Hits The Financial Elite, They Start Turning On Each Other (AmpedStatus, Sep 3, 2011):

Finally, after trillions in fraudulent activity, trillions in bailouts, trillions in printed money, billions in political bribing and billions in bonuses, the criminal cartel members on Wall Street are beginning to get what they deserve. As the Eurozone is coming apart at the seams and as the US economy grinds to a halt, the financial elite are starting to turn on each other. The lawsuits are piling up fast. Here’s an extensive roundup:

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Aug 30

- It’s Time to Bring Our Mortgages Home – Your Municipality and Community Venture Fund is the Ideal Investor for Fannie, Freddie & FHA Defaulted Mortgages (Solari, August 29, 2011):

By Catherine Austin Fitts (in the first person) and Carolyn Betts

The Administration is now proposing the transfer of significant defaulted mortgages and foreclosed properties held by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration (“FHA”) to large national institutional investors.

A Huge Housing Bargain — but Not for You
The Street (18 Aug 11)

White House Seeks Ideas to Shrink Foreclosure Glut
Catherine, News & Commentary (11 Aug 11)

Enterprise/FHA REO Asset Disposition (PDF)
RFIFinal (10 Aug 11)

Such a transfer is not economic — other than for the large investors and to serve a wider agenda of social control and engineering, including gentrification of numerous areas whose former residents were fraudulently induced and evicted with the use of these mortgages.

I served as FHA Commissioner (See: Austin Fitts Better be Good With Hammer and Nails) during the first Bush Administration and then, several years later, my company, Hamilton Securities Group, served as the lead financial advisor to FHA, providing portfolio strategy advice with respect to $400 billion of financial liabilities and assets, including over 50,000 of foreclosed properties held by the government as the result of mortgage insurance claims for defaulted FHA-insured mortgages.

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Aug 26


Obama bin Bush: Mission accomplished!

- Obama Goes All Out For Dirty Banker Deal (Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, August 24, 2011):

A power play is underway in the foreclosure arena, according to the New York Times.

On the one side is Eric Schneiderman, the New York Attorney General, who is conducting his own investigation into the era of securitizations – the practice of chopping up assets like mortgages and converting them into saleable securities – that led up to the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

On the other side is the Obama administration, the banks, and all the other state attorneys general.

This second camp has cooked up a deal that would allow the banks to walk away with just a seriously discounted fine from a generation of fraud that led to millions of people losing their homes.

The idea behind this federally-guided “settlement” is to concentrate and centralize all the legal exposure accrued by this generation of grotesque banker corruption in one place, put one single price tag on it that everyone can live with, and then stuff the details into a titanium canister before shooting it into deep space.

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Jul 26

- Welcome to the Recovery (New York Times, by Timothy Geithner, August 2, 2010)


- Laurie Goodman On Why Another 11 Million Mortgages Will Go Bad (Business Insider, July 26, 2011):

A major bear on the housing market, Amherst Securities’ Laurie Goodman has predicted since 2009 another housing crash as banks are forced to liquidate tons of bad loans.

Up to 11 million mortgages are likely to default, according to Goodman. This is a frightening figure, seeing as only several million have been liquidated since the crisis began. When it happens the market will be flooded with supply.

Goodman reached 11 million by projecting default rates for non-performing loans, re-performing loans, and underwater loans. Here’s a slide from a recent presentation (via The Atlantic):

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Jun 18


Added: 17.06.2011

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Jun 07

- 66% Of Las Vegas Mortgages Are Underwater, 27.7% Of Total US Housing Debt Has Negative And Near-Negative Equity (ZeroHedge, June 7, 2011):

Following yesterday’s news out of Zillow of a 0.77% drop in April home values compared to March, today we get an update from CoreLogic which in turn looks at the latest trends on “underwater” (or negative equity) mortgages in the US. In summary: “10.9 million, or 22.7 percent, of all residential properties with a mortgage were in negative equity at the end of the first quarter of 2011, down slightly from 11.1 million, or 23.1 percent, in the fourth quarter. An additional 2.4 million borrowers had less than five percent equity, referred to as near-negative equity, in the first quarter. Together, negative equity and near-negative equity mortgages accounted for 27.7 percent of all residential properties with a mortgage nationwide. In the fourth quarter, these two categories stood at 27.9 percent.The most impacted state is Nevada, which has 62.6% of all mortgages underwater (with another 4.8% in near-negative), followed by Arizona, Florida and Michigan. California is fifth with 30.9% of all homes underwater. We doubt these millions of “homeowners” are benefiting much from the wealth effect.

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