Added: 3. März 2010
Tags: AIG, Bailout, Banks, Bill Clinton, Bubble, CO2, Commodities, Derivatives, Derivatives market, Economy, Financial Crisis, Global News, Goldman Sachs, Government, Henry Paulson, Internet, Larry Summers, Mortgage crisis, Mortgages, Oil, Oil Prices, Politics, Robert Rubin, Timothy Geithner, U.S., Wall Street
Fannie Mae headquarters in Washington, D.C.
(CNSNews.com) - Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) says the Obama administration is using an accounting “gimmick” in its budget by not including the debt owed by mortgage firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
“The accounting gimmicks that are used today would make an Enron and WorldCom accountant blush,” Hensarling told reporters. “The American people know that under the policies of this administration-under the policies of this Congress-we are drowning in a sea of red ink.”
Hensarling, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, joined a group of House Republicans Tuesday in announcing the introduction of a bill that would require President Obama’s Office of Management and Budget to include the liabilities of Fannie and Freddie in the national debt calculation.
The two companies are defined as government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) whose portfolios include trillions of dollars in American mortgages, many of which are now “under water.” The federal government took control of the mortgage giants in 2008, as they neared financial collapse.
Billions of taxpayer dollars ($61 billion for Fannie Mae and $51 billion for Freddie Mac) has been spent so far to keep the GSEs solvent. Just this week, Freddie Mac reported a $7.8 billion loss in the final three months of 2009, but said it will not require another taxpayer infusion at this time.
Hensarling on Tuesday suggested that the administration is under-reporting the nation’s debt by failing to account for the potential liability incurred if Fannie and Freddie go deeper into the red.
The potential liabilities incurred by Fannie and Freddie, Hensarling said, would amount to “the mother of all bailouts.”
Headquarters of the federally chartered mortgage giant, Freddie Mac, in McLean, Va.
“When the final chapter is written on the history of our financial debacle, it will show that the cause was the government policies that cajoled, incented (sic) and mandated financial institutions to lend money to people to buy homes that, ultimately, they could not afford,” Hensarling said. “At the epicenter of those federal policies was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and before all the dust settles in the final accounting, they will prove to be the mother of all bailouts.”
Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, estimated that the unfunded liabilities of Fannie and Freddie could exceed $5 trillion.
Under Republican’s proposed bill, the White House Office of Management and Budget would have to treat the GSEs’ estimated liabilities as part of the federal debt, and those liabilities along with the rest of the debt would have to remain under the debt ceiling.
Congress recently voted to raise the debt ceiling above $14 trillion dollars for the first time to accommodate other spending. Continue reading »
Tags: Barack Obama, Congress, Economy, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Government, Jeb Hensarling, Mortgage crisis, Mortgages, Obama administration, Politics, U.S.
On January 21st, Lloyd Blankfein left a peculiar voicemail message on the work phones of his employees at Goldman Sachs. Fast becoming America’s pre-eminent Marvel Comics supervillain, the CEO used the call to deploy his secret weapon: a pair of giant, nuclear-powered testicles. In his message, Blankfein addressed his plan to pay out gigantic year-end bonuses amid widespread controversy over Goldman’s role in precipitating the global financial crisis.
The bank had already set aside a tidy $16.2 billion for salaries and bonuses - meaning that Goldman employees were each set to take home an average of $498,246, a number roughly commensurate with what they received during the bubble years. Still, the troops were worried: There were rumors that Dr. Ballsachs, bowing to political pressure, might be forced to scale the number back. After all, the country was broke, 14.8 million Americans were stranded on the unemployment line, and Barack Obama and the Democrats were trying to recover the populist high ground after their bitch-whipping in Massachusetts by calling for a “bailout tax” on banks. Maybe this wasn’t the right time for Goldman to be throwing its annual Roman bonus orgy.
Not to worry, Blankfein reassured employees. “In a year that proved to have no shortage of story lines,” he said, “I believe very strongly that performance is the ultimate narrative.”
Translation: We made a shitload of money last year because we’re so amazing at our jobs, so fuck all those people who want us to reduce our bonuses.
Goldman wasn’t alone. The nation’s six largest banks - all committed to this balls-out, I drink your milkshake! strategy of flagrantly gorging themselves as America goes hungry - set aside a whopping $140 billion for executive compensation last year, a sum only slightly less than the $164 billion they paid themselves in the pre-crash year of 2007. In a gesture of self-sacrifice, Blankfein himself took a humiliatingly low bonus of $9 million, less than the 2009 pay of elephantine New York Knicks washout Eddy Curry. But in reality, not much had changed. “What is the state of our moral being when Lloyd Blankfein taking a $9 million bonus is viewed as this great act of contrition, when every penny of it was a direct transfer from the taxpayer?” asks Eliot Spitzer, who tried to hold Wall Street accountable during his own ill-fated stint as governor of New York.
Beyond a few such bleats of outrage, however, the huge payout was met, by and large, with a collective sigh of resignation. Because beneath America’s populist veneer, on a more subtle strata of the national psyche, there remains a strong temptation to not really give a shit. The rich, after all, have always made way too much money; what’s the difference if some fat cat in New York pockets $20 million instead of $10 million?
The only reason such apathy exists, however, is because there’s still a widespread misunderstanding of how exactly Wall Street “earns” its money, with emphasis on the quotation marks around “earns.” The question everyone should be asking, as one bailout recipient after another posts massive profits - Goldman reported $13.4 billion in profits last year, after paying out that $16.2 billion in bonuses and compensation - is this: In an economy as horrible as ours, with every factory town between New York and Los Angeles looking like those hollowed-out ghost ships we see on History Channel documentaries like Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes, where in the hell did Wall Street’s eye-popping profits come from, exactly? Did Goldman go from bailout city to $13.4 billion in the black because, as Blankfein suggests, its “performance” was just that awesome? A year and a half after they were minutes away from bankruptcy, how are these assholes not only back on their feet again, but hauling in bonuses at the same rate they were during the bubble?
The answer to that question is basically twofold: They raped the taxpayer, and they raped their clients. Continue reading »
Tags: AIG, Alan Greenspan, Bailout, Bank of America, Bankruptcy, Banks, Ben Bernanke, Bonds, Brad Sherman, Bubble, Citigroup, Debt, Economy, FDIC, Fed, Federal Reserve, Goldman Sachs, Government, JPMorgan, Matt Taibbi, Morgan Stanley, Mortgage crisis, Mortgages, Politics, Ponzi schemes, Robert Rubin, Societe Generale, Taxpayers, Timothy Geithner, Treasury, Wall Street
- Commercial Real Estate Losses Could Hit $300 Billion: TARP Panel:
“The banks that are on the front lines of small-business lending are about to get hit by a tidal wave of commercial-loan failures,” said Elizabeth Warren, a law professor at Harvard University who heads the COP.
Warren and her fellow panel members warn that “a significant wave of commercial mortgage defaults would trigger economic damage that could touch the lives of nearly every American.”
• Commercial property set to lose $300bn on $1.4bn of loans
• Nearly 3,000 banks face dangerous exposure as loans mature
Wall Street banks and other financial institutions may be heading for the wall as a further crisis looms in 2011 over commercial property loans. Photograph: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images
America’s fragile high street banks are bracing themselves for a fresh financial crunch as a wave of commercial property mortgages go sour on offices, shops and factories, causing losses of up to $300bn (£192bn) hitting nearly 3,000 small- and medium-sized financial institutions.
A congressional oversight panel charged with scrutinising the Obama administration’s bailout efforts has warned that $1.4tn of loans covering commercial premises will reach maturity between 2011 and 2014. After a plunge in property prices, nearly half of these loans are underwater, with borrowers owing more than their underlying property is worth.
An analysis by the panel found that 2,988 of America’s 8,100 banks have potentially dangerous exposure to commercial property loans. The impact could damage hopes of a US economic recovery and could cause a further squeeze in the availability of credit to consumers and businesses. Continue reading »
Tags: Bailout, Banks, Barack Obama, Government, Mortgage crisis, Mortgages, Obama administration, Politics, Real Estate, Wall Street
Green shoots!
NEW YORK - One of every five U.S. homeowners owed more on their mortgage than their home was worth in the fourth quarter, a trend that poses a serious threat to the U.S. housing market’s recovery, real estate Web site Zillow.com said on Wednesday.
Homeowners with “underwater” mortgages are more prone to defaults and foreclosures. They typically do not qualify for refinancings and are unable to sell their homes because they would need to cough up cash at closing time to pay off their mortgage.
The percentage of American single-family homes with mortgages in negative equity rose to 21.4 percent in the fourth quarter from 21 percent in the third quarter, according to the Zillow Real Estate Market Reports.
U.S. home values declined again in the fourth quarter, as the Zillow Home Value Index fell 5 percent year-over-year and down 0.5 percent quarter-over-quarter, to $186,200. It was the 12th consecutive quarter of year-over-year declines, the reports showed.
“The prevalence of markets in or near a double-dip situation shows that we are not yet at the bottom, in terms of home values,” Stan Humphries, Zillow chief economist, said in an interview. Continue reading »
Tags: Economy, Foreclosures, Global News, Mortgage crisis, Mortgages, Real Estate, U.S.
Related information:
- To all homeowners in foreclosure: Judge wipes out $460,000 mortgage debt
There is an interesting post on Tech Ticker with Henry Blodget called Yes, It’s Okay To Walk Away From Your Mortgage.
As many Americans begin to realize that it will be many years (if not decades) before their houses are worth what they owe on them, the idea of walking away from your mortgage is going mainstream. Not surprisingly, the mortgage industry is doing everything it can to prevent this, including telling homeowners that they have a “moral obligation” to pay.
But do they?
There’s no universal answer here, but in most cases, the answer is “Yes, it’s okay to walk away.” Importantly, the reason is not that “Wall Street deserves it” or “We’ve got to teach the banks a lesson” or any of the other retribution logic being thrown around these days. The reason is that you and your lender engaged in an arms-length transaction in which both parties balanced competing interests and spelled out their obligations in a clear, signed contract. And unless that contract states that you have a “moral obligation to pay,” you don’t have a moral obligation to pay.
You, meanwhile, also made a business decision. You decided to borrow money to buy your house even though it meant risking your equity, home, and credit rating.
And now it turns out that both of you made a bad decision.
Fortunately, you don’t have to fight about what happens next. The contract between you spells everything out: If you stop paying, the lender gets the house. That’s it. Unless the contract specifically differentiates between a failure to pay based on hardship (involuntary) and a failure to pay based on a collapse in the value of the house (voluntary), there’s no difference. If the lender thought at the beginning that you had a “moral obligation to pay,” it would have specified that in the contract.
Now, compare this to a situation in which you DO have a moral obligation to pay: When you borrow money from a friend at no interest, for example, and you promise that friend that you will give him or her every penny back. THAT is a moral obligation to pay. In this case, your friend did not lend you money to make a profit. Your friend loaned you money to help you out–with no collateral or contract other than your promise to pay.
Blodget makes a powerful case distinguishing moral obligations of paying back a friend or family member vs. the moral obligation (none) on a mortgage with a bank.
If the lender thought at the beginning that you had a “moral obligation to pay,” it would have [or should have] specified that in the contract. Continue reading »
Tags: Banks, Economy, Mortgages, Obama administration, Politics, Real Estate, Society
Added: 5th Jan 2010
Continue reading »
Tags: Barack Obama, Debt, Dollar, Economy, Fed, Federal Reserve, Government, Inflation, Mortgages, Obama administration, Politics, Real Estate, U.S., Unemployment
See also:
- Peter Schiff on Obamacare, Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae: The Nightmare Before Christmas
- Obama administration backs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac no matter how big their losses may be
A pedestrian walks past Fannie Mae headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 7, 2009. (Bloomberg)
Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) — Taxpayer losses from supporting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will top $400 billion, according to Peter Wallison, a former general counsel at the Treasury who is now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
“The situation is they are losing gobs of money, up to $400 billion in mortgages,” Wallison said in a Bloomberg Television interview. The Treasury Department recognized last week that losses will be more than $400 billion when it raised its limit on federal support for the two government-sponsored enterprises, he said.
Tags: Economy, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Mortgages, Politics, Taxpayers, Treasury, U.S.
Treasury has reloaded its bazooka and stands ready to shock and awe the housing market.
Though, Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller data showed a fifth month of improvement yesterday, analysts still expect prices to fall 10 percent or more next year as various government supports wind down.
Political pressure ahead of midterm elections will likely force the administration to do something in response and Treasury’s Christmas gift of nearly unlimited support for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac gives them a powerful weapon to do so.
But it will be a tough fight as artificial, government-sponsored demand dries up.
The housing tax credit — $8,000 for first-time buyers, $6,500 for move-up buyers — ends in April. Meanwhile, the Federal Housing Administration plans to tighten its loose lending standards as its reserve fund has dwindled.
Moreover, mortgage rates may head higher as the government ends purchases of mortgage-backed securities. Treasury’s $220 billion buyback program ends this week. The Federal Reserve’s $1.25 trillion program ceases in March.
And then there’s the continuing flood of Treasuries to finance the federal deficit. Morgan Stanley estimates that could drive 30-year mortgage rates back above 7.5 percent, an effective 40 percent increase in the cost of financing home purchases. That looks high, but even a smaller jump will drive buyers from the market and force house prices down.
Tags: Economy, Government, Mortgages, Obama administration, Politics, Real Estate, Treasury, U.S.
Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) — Meredith Whitney, the analyst who cut her rating on Goldman Sachs Group Inc. last month, said bank stocks are overvalued after rallying faster than the U.S. economy and share prices will fall to tangible book value.
“I haven’t been this bearish in a year,” Whitney, founder of Meredith Whitney Advisory Group LLC, said today in a CNBC television interview. “I think you can sit on cash for a little bit, because you have to wait for a leg down in valuations. The S&P is expensive across the board.”
Tags: Banks, Economy, Fannie Mae, Fed, Federal Reserve, Freddie Mac, Meredith Whitney, Mortgage crisis, Mortgages, Real Estate, S&P 500, Stock Market, Wall Street
