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18 Dec 2011 11:20

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Politics: So … who’s paying for the payroll tax cut, anyway? Homeowners

  • $17 per month charges on new homeowners’ mortgages source
  • » Those who refinance will feel the pinch, too: To help pay for the $33 billion cost of the extended-by-two-months payroll tax cut, the federal government will increase the cost for homeowners to get their homes insured by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who currently back nine out of ten home mortgages in the U.S. The fee, currently around 0.3 percentage points, would jump by 0.1 percentage points, which translates to roughly $17 per month for most homeowners. However, this fee would not affect current homeowners unless they refinance starting next year. Is this the best way to handle the extension?
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 Nov 2011 21:00

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Politics: Barney Frank condemns Newt Gingrich on Freddie Mac claim

  • There are two ‘L’ words that apply with Newt, lobbyist and liar. Mr. Gingrich was reprimanded for lying. He has a history of doing that and this is nonsense that he was being paid $1.6 million and maybe more to talk about history.
  • Rep. Barney Frank • Pulling no punches in his condemnation of Newt Gingrich, over Gingrich’s claim that his $1.6 million in income from Freddie Mac was earned not as a lobbyist, but as a historian. Frank and Gingrich are former colleagues in the House, and it doesn’t seem they terribly care for one another — at a previous debate, Gingrich suggested Frank and financial reform law co-sponsor Chris Dodd should be jailed. source
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Jul 2011 23:23

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World: The US Treasury is running low on cash

  • 29 companies have more money than the United States Treasury
  • 7 of those companies are based in America source
  • » The American companies include: Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Freddie Mac. Two of the top three companies on the list are Chinese. On the upside, the Treasury has as much money as Google, so that’s kind of a nice consolation prize.
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

11 Feb 2011 10:57

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Biz: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac getting kicked onto the curb?

  • This is a plan for fundamental reform — to wind down the GSEs, strengthen consumer protection and preserve access to affordable housing for people who need it.
  • Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner • Explaining how he wants to wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-owned mortgage-securities organizations which helped fuel the housing bubble and were ultimately felled by the subprime mortgage crisis. Geithner laid out three different ways to solve the Fannie and Freddie problem, all of which involve getting them off the taxpayer’s dime. The solutions rank in varying degrees – one is completely privatized with government guidance, one plays middle ground, and the third is a more-regulated version of Fannie and Freddie. The current organizations would pay off their massive debts, though. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

11 Feb 2011 10:37

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Biz: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac: When does “bailout” become “sinkhole”?

  • $153
    billion     the amount that taxpayers have lost already on bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
  • $68
    billion     the amount expected to fall into that money pit by 2013 – a $211 billion grand total source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

22 Jan 2011 10:53

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Biz: Bank of America takes epic charge on its hot mortgage mess

  • $2.24
    billion     the amount the bailed-out Bank of America lost in 2010, hurt by charges due to their Countrywide merger
  • $4.1
    billion     the size of the charge they had to take for investors with claims against their mortgage securities  source
  • » Why such a big charge? Apparently, someone at Bank of America (or Countrywide) was really bad at doing paperwork, or was trying to push through half-baked mortgages. Because both were named as factors in creating the huge charges which resulted from investors making claims against them. Most of the fees are headed to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, by the way. Had this charge (and a separate $2 billion goodwill charge related to the Countrywide merger) not been there, Bank of America would’ve been profitable in the fourth quarter.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

06 Nov 2010 00:01

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Biz: Fannie Mae’s losses like a depressing slow-motion car crash

  • $3.5billion lost in the most recent quarter; that’s great!
  • 13 number of quarterly losses the government-owned mortgage finance firm has had in a row
  • $19.8B the amount of money it lost in the same ultra-depressing quarter about a year ago
  • $89B the amount of money the government has poured into Fannie Mae during the recession source
  • » Oh yeah, they need more help. We can’t imagine how much fun it is to work at Fannie Mae right now. The company, after all the loans they’ve already gotten from the government, needs another $2.5 billion from the U.S. Treasury. And their buddy Freddie Mac had an even bigger loss last quarter, with $4.1 billion falling in their depressing money pit.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

07 Oct 2010 11:11

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Biz: Freddie Mac: Mortgage rates lower than they’ve ever been

  • 4.27% mortgage rates; that’s the lowest ever source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 Jun 2010 09:46

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Biz: Fannie & Freddie’s stocks so crappy right now, they’re getting delisted

  • what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two massive government-backed mortgage companies, are trading so lo that they’re about to be delisted.
  • when Expect both stocks to get removed from the New York Stock Exchange by July 8. They’ll trade in the the over-the-counter market instead. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

08 May 2010 12:46

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Politics: Sen. Richard Shelby: Financial reform missing Fannie, Freddie

  • When home prices finally collapsed, these ticking time bombs exploded, saddling taxpayers with hundreds of billions of dollars of debt.
  • Sen. Richard Shelby • Saying why he thinks the financial reform bill should include Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two major mortgage companies that fell apart during the financial crisis. He thinks that the financial reform bill should do something about the mortgage giants, which he characterized as costing taxpayers significant amounts of money. During his statement, in response to Obama’s weekly radio address (which tackled health care’s successes), Shelby also criticized a proposed consumer protection watchdog bureau in the Federal Reserve for possibly raising costs for taxpayers. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
 
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