The focus of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under conservatorship in the Obama administration is increasingly more about rescuing struggling homeowners than it is appeasing anxious stockholders. In a stark departure from the Bush administration, the two GSEs have been much more an instrument of public policy, promoting liquidity to the market, helping homeowners avert foreclosure, and setting the... Read More

It looks like Superman has finally been tagged with some kryptonite. The Federal Home Loan Banks, most of which have been among the few bright spots during the current calamitous housing and credit markets, have been hit broadly with non-agency mortgage losses during the fourth quarter, leading to five of the Banks collectively taking writedowns of approximately $1.8 billion during 2008... Read More

California took its share of lumps from the slumping mortgage market pounding the country throughout 2008, but still ended the year with the nation’s biggest slice of new business for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Nationwide, the market pummeling accelerated in the second half of the year, but Fannie nonetheless outdid rival Freddie in picking up a... [Includes one chart] Read More

Fannie Mae’s troubling fourth quarter results reveals that the “R” word, receivership, has entered the GSE’s dialogue with its regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency. And while the substantial backing of the U.S. Treasury appears to make that prospect unlikely, Fannie indicated that support might not be enough.Treasury recently doubled its senior preferred stock agreement... Read More

Fannie Mae, like Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks, is regulated by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, but they all remain vulnerable to the winds of mark-to-market accounting and the mandates from the Financial Accounting Standards Board. This past September, the FASB issued an exposure draft of a proposed statement of financial accounting standards, Amendments to... Read More

Conservatorship has been a far less lucrative world for Fannie Mae’s current roster of top executives than the previous crop. Fannie got six top executives last year for $3,858,597 – less than a third of what it paid former CEO Dan Mudd in 2007: $12,217,500, Fannie’s latest 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicates. The starkest difference is found... Read More

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac gained an additional $81.65 billion in federal support for their mortgage-backed securities in the latest buying cycle by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Most of that, $54.57 billion, went to Fannie this time around. Freddie got about half of that support, capturing $27.08 billion from the Fed purchases. Ginnie Mae, on the... Read More

Who says complaining doesn’t help? After a number of Federal Home Loan Banks and many of their allies raised a ruckus over a proposal by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. that would have raised Deposit Insurance Fund assessments on heavy users of FHLBank advances, the agency scaled back its proposal, shrinking the universe of institutions likely to be affected by the increased... Read More

FHFA Preps to Study FHLBank Securitization: The Federal Home Loan Banks may be one step closer to gaining the... Fannie Mae Faces Possible NYSE Delisting on May 11: Fannie Mae is considering the unusual step of initiating a reverse... Fannie Exposed to Significant Expenses from Probes, Lawsuits: Among the increasing business risks that Fannie Mae is... Read More