Post Tagged with: "Freddie Mac"
Fannie Putting Dubious Loans Back to BofA, So BofA Will Stick Them to Freddie Instead
It looks like someone at Fannie woke up and realized that any case of a guarantor voiding a policy was prima facie evidence that BofA had breached a rep and warranty about loan quality. Look at the examples: inflated appraisals and incomes
The current housing bust is much worse than the Great Depression
Great chart from the recently released Economic Report of the President. We suspect the Great Depression housing bust didn’t have the government props to soften the blow as we do today, which, therefore, on a relative basis, makes the current bust much worse. The prior conditions to the current bust must have been much worse than those before the Great Depression
More on Banks Making Shed Loads But Fannie And Freddie “Losing Money as a Matter of Policy”
Fannie and Freddie have already been nationalized and the government is already on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars of losses as a result. Clearly, this makes it a lot easier to use the GSEs as vehicles to pump money into the economy because any incremental loss is completely obscured by the existing gargantuan losses. Fannie and Freddie can essentially become a giant stimulus slush fund for the Obama Administration as we head into the 2012 election
[Premium] The Fed’s Rate easing and Obama’s Mortgage refi plan are bullish
Investors must still be worried about the fallout from the European meltdown. However, the situation in the US is looking much better than it did last week because of this aggressive policy response
Time to Demand Transparency and Accountability of Our Public Stewards
When will we begin to reign-in the Fed and hold it accountable? And will we let the Fed bail-out Wall Street without Congressional approval of funding the next time it crashes? We need to answer these questions soon, because it is beginning to look like the next crash is on its way
The FHFA Complaints and Control Fraud
The FHFA complaints lose explanatory power and persuasiveness because they ignore compensation and accounting. It pays to understand accounting control fraud
FHFA Sues 17 Firms to Recover Losses to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
The complaints seek damages and civil penalties under the Securities Act of 1933, similar in content to the complaint FHFA filed against UBS Americas, Inc. on July 27, 2011. In addition, each complaint seeks compensatory damages for negligent misrepresentation
Shiller: Austerity Negative for Housing
Economist Robert Shiller spoke with Carol Massar and Matt Miller on Bloomberg Television’s “Street Smart” on Tuesday. Shiller sees the likely austerity that the US will see as a result of the debt ceiling debate as negative for housing demand and expects this to impact prices. Video embedded in post
No Crisis Here
I decided to look at what President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) were saying in their annual reports for 2005-2007 about the massive real estate bubble, epidemic of accounting control fraud and mortgage fraud, the resultant rapidly developing financial crisis, and the great increase in economic inequality. Here’s what I found on these topics
Freddie Mac: Tone Deaf at the Top
By William K. Black Freddie Mac made a terse announcement Wednesday in a securities filing about the resignation of its chief operating officer, Bruce Witherell. Freddie said that Witherell resigned "for personal reasons." His departure was effective immediately and he received no termination benefits. He had been receiving several millions of dollars in annual compensation
Wallison in His Own Words on Causes of Crisis
By William K. Black (Cross-posted from Benzinga) The big news in U.S. regulation last week was the release of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission reports. (There’s a major article in the New York Times about Kabul Bank that supports warnings made in my earlier column on that scandal.) The Commission report and the two dissents
Housing Humbug
This marks the 4th month in a row of falling home prices, and the first negative year-over-year reading since January of 2010. Freddie Mac released their monthly volume summary for November which contained information on seriously delinquencies (90 days or more delinquent), which rose for the 2nd month in a row. As you can see below, this delinquency rate tends to move with unemployment, which crept back above 15 million people in November. Delinquencies had been on an improving trend throughout 2010, and the recent reversal is worth watching. The coming year could be an interesting one for the US housing market.