Get ready for another Wall Street bailout

When you know you are about to do something unpopular you try to hide it. For instance, the public would never know that over 140 banks (not counting credit unions) have gone under this year because their announced failures only happen on Friday evenings.
Another extremely unpopular event would be another round of bailouts for Wall Street banks. That's why the provisions are hidden deep within the financial reform bill.

For all its heft, the bill doesn’t once mention the words “too-big-to-fail,” the main issue confronting the financial system.
Instead, it supports the biggest banks. It authorizes Federal Reserve banks to provide as much as $4 trillion in emergency funding the next time Wall Street crashes. So much for “no-more-bailouts” talk. That is more than twice what the Fed pumped into markets this time around. The size of the fund makes the bribes in the Senate’s health-care bill look minuscule.

Believe it or not, this is not the most outrageous thing Washington has done in the last week.

On Christmas Eve, the one day that Washington is certain the public will be distracted, Congress lifted all limits on bailouts for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Treasury is now amending the PSPAs to allow the cap on Treasury's funding commitment under these agreements to increase as necessary to accommodate any cumulative reduction in net worth over the next three years. At the conclusion of the three year period, the remaining commitment will then be fully available to be drawn per the terms of the agreements.

Fannie and Freddie already had a $400 Billion credit line with the Treasury, $110 Billion of which they have already used for bailouts. Putting two and two together adds up to expected losses exceeding $400 Billion.

(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.

Normally when a person, or company, is hemorrhaging money by the buckets the creditors (in this case the taxpayers) would step in and say, "We'll bail you out, but you have to take steps to prevent further losses in the future." Right? That's how bankruptcy is supposed to work.

Not in this case.
Instead of demanding more accountability and less future losses, government regulators have told Fannie and Freddie that they are free to take on even MORE risk.

When the Treasury Department took over Fannie and Freddie last year, one of the requirements they set for the companies required them to begin shrinking their portfolios of mortgages and related investments, which total a combined $1.5 trillion. The idea was to rein in the companies' size and growth.
But last Thursday, the Treasury eased that requirement, meaning the companies won't be forced to sell mortgages into an already weak market and could even buy mortgages on the market, which could help hold down interest rates.

Expanding a portfolio that is already hemorrhaging money is a sure-fire loser of a strategy.

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Since we didn't have enough money for real health care reform, why do we have unlimited amounts of money for the mortgage industry? To answer that just look a couple paragraphs further down the article.

Mahesh Swaminathan, senior mortgage analyst at Credit Suisse, said the firms could use their increased capacity to purchase delinquent loans from pools of mortgage-backed securities that they guarantee. Fannie and Freddie already purchase defaulted loans as they modify them under the administration's loan-modification program, but the additional breathing room means it is now a "slam-dunk for them to speed up" purchases of delinquent loans, Mr. Swaminathan said. New accounting rules that take effect next year also could make it more cost-effective for the companies to buy out bad loans and keep them in their investment portfolios.

The idea is for Fannie and Freddie to buy more defaulting mortgage-backed securities. Who is holding those defaulted mortgage-backed securities? Why Wall Street banks, of course.

This is another Wall Street bailout via backdoor.

Why now? Because the Federal Reserve is winding down its $1.25 Trillion mortgage-backed securities purchase program this spring. For the past 9 months, the Fed has been the mortgage market.
Since the Federal Reserve's portfolio is already poisoned with these toxic assets to the point of insolvency, the risk must be transferred to the Treasury.

Others said the new flexibility means that Fannie and Freddie could replace the Fed as a big buyer of mortgage-backed securities, especially if weak demand for mortgage-backed securities from private investors drives rates higher.
"It's created a government-purchasing facility other than the Fed," said Karen Shaw Petrou, managing partner of Federal Financial Analytics, a research firm in Washington.

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At this point you must ask yourself if there is any measure that the politicians in Washington won't stoop to in order to bailout their Wall Street masters? The Wall Street bankers are reporting record profits and record bonuses and why shouldn't they? After all, when you can offload all your bad investments to the taxpayer, while keeping all your winning investments, why shouldn't the champagne flow this New Year's Eve?

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Comments

And guess what

Fannie/Freddie purchases these loans at PAR value not market value - just another gift to financial oligarchy.

So this how the Obama Administration intends to avoid a "Lost Decade" by removing bad debts from financial sector to government/taxpayers. There better be some mortgage debt forgiveness.

RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.

Good summary

I found the same clause in the House financial reform legislation and I need to look at it again (god, it's a task like washing toilets to read that bill), but I wish the Bloomberg reporter would foot note page and clauses in his claim on the $4 trillion.

I can verify it is in the bill, but I might have gotten hoodwinked on the safeguards and the supposedly claim the banks were going to fund their own bail out money...

I hope we see more analysis but one thing certain, the House bill on derivatives is swiss cheese.

I want to get more focus on Fannie/Freddie too, I mean unlimited, $400B, we're talking much greater actual losses than anything else, more money than TARP...and it's barely getting a mention in the MSM!

What's so screwed up:

Is the amount of resources dedicated to preserving the status quo and protecting the financial oligarchy instead of focusing on putting people back to work.

When is this Administration going to fight for CHANGE?

RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.

Reality Strikes

Ultra blog!

So, technically speaking, the Fed is behind all mortgage loans over the past 12 months -- given that the four top lenders are Fed (or Treasury supported): Fannie, Freddie, GMAC and AIG.

Next, via all their funds, the Fed (or the Treasury via the Fed) is subsidizing Wall Street; so now we have the Fed (or gov't) subsidizing the Real Estate arena and Wall Street (that's the F and RE of the FIRE sector, now comprising above 60% -- some say above 70% -- of the entire US economy).

OK, so next the gov't passes this "healthcare reform" legislation, mandating the subsidization of the insurance industry (the I of that FIRE acronym).

So....it appears those who have been saying that there is no economy may actually be correct, with the Fed -- or the gov't -- subsidizing Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE).

For those not up on their socioeconomic terminology, this ain't socialism, it is, though, the correct representation of the Corporate Fascist State (especially as the government is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wall Street).

An interesting sidebar: with the passage of this "healthcare reform" legislation, the way it is presently worded, will mandate many Americans to be either on the dole (that is, we are legally required to approach the government for their aid in the purchase of private insurance), or "freeloaders" (should they avoid going on the dole). This is an interesting psychological framing of this play: either you are forced to purchase "health insurance" on one's ever-decreasing wages, or one is a "freeloader" as others (according to popular mythology) are paying for them.

Who's paying for all those debt-financed billionaires? Yup, that would be the rest of us poor souls.

Next time you hear someone complaining about their student loans, please remind them that is the way we support all those debt-financed billionaires!

Sad Situation

This is a really sad situation that we are all in. We see that there needs to be something done but yet we cannot do anything. Our government is destroying the economy so badly that it almost seems intentional.