Posted on 12/24/2009 8:10:32 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The Obama administration pledged Thursday to provide unlimited financial assistance to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, an eleventh-hour move that allows the government to exceed the current $400 billion cap on emergency aid without seeking permission from a bailout-weary Congress.
The Christmas Eve announcement by the Treasury Department means that it can continue to run the companies, which were seized last year, as arms of the government for the rest of President Obama's current term.
But even as the administration was making this open-ended financial commitment, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac disclosed that they had received approval from their federal regulator to pay $42 million in Wall Street-style compensation packages to 12 top executives for 2009.
The compensation packages, including up to $6 million each to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's chief executives, come amid an ongoing public debate about lavish payments to executives at banks and other financial firms that have received taxpayer aid. But while many firms on Wall Street have repaid the assistance, there is no prospect that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will do so.
The administration faced a congressionally mandated deadline of Dec. 31 to increase the amount of aid it could provide to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which together have already received $111 billion in assistance.
Treasury said Thursday that its decision did not mean the firms would need $200 billion or more apiece, but that it instead was seeking to assure markets that the government would stand behind the companies. In a statement, Treasury said the move "should leave no uncertainty about the Treasury's commitment to support these firms as they continue to play a vital role in the housing market during this current crisis."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I’m starting to think he wants us to take to the streets so he has an excuse to lock us up. It’s one outrage after another. Scarey times we live in. I think we are damned if we do and double damned if we don’t.
0bama -
After years of irresponsibility, we are once again taking responsibility for every dollar we spend the same way families do. It’s true that what I’ve described today will not be enough to get us out of our fiscal mess by itself. We face a deficit that will take some tough decisions in the next year’s budget and in years to come to get under control. But these changes will save the American people billions of dollars. And they’ll help to put in place a government that’s more efficient and effective, that wastes less money on no-bid contracts, that’s cutting bureaucracy and harnessing technology, that’s more fiscally responsible and that better serve the American taxpayer.
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Yeah, right!
See tagline...
Promising to rape TaxPayers to fund handouts to those un-qualified buyers who were loaned due to the FORCED LENDING via Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, et al, or face charges of "Red-Lining".
Gotta pay for mortgages of those who should NOT have ever been loaned money in the first place!
Who's zooming who? Willing co-conspirators aren't brakemen for runaway socialism. The looting of the country continues...unabated.
$42 million in Wall Street-style compensation packages to 12 top executives for 2009. Barney Frank smiles and gives finger.
Wait until 2010, when 5 year ARMs(written at the top of the bubble) come due, and commercial real estate collapses.
This is the “new” capitalism. From here on out big corporations are going to continue to use the government as a tool to regulate their competition into destruction, then turn around and demand that every major venture they embark on be backed by the federal government through tax breaks and Fed financing.
Why not, it won’t be coming out of bummer’s pocket. They continue to reward failure.
The correct move is to have both Freddie and Fannie reduce their portfolios through runoff by 10% per year. When they are the right size privatize them into the stock market qandget the Feds the hell out of it.
It’s bailout after bailout of every money-sucking government-owned ‘corporation’.
You think Obama's on drugs, I think he's just taking his marching orders from his globalist elite handlers.
Its larceny. Fannie and Freddie led the way in creating the mortgage boondoggle that brought on the recession, and youd think they all wear golden halos.
There is a defacto affirmative action mortgage program where money is being lent to unqualified buyers, and these mortgages are issued under fannie mae/freddie mac programs.STILL.
THIS HAS TO STOP or we will have boondoggle two and a deeper recession.
This cap removal guarantees a re creation of the same situation all over again, because the Obama Junta wants to buy votes.
There should be a congressional enquiry into why Freddie Mac and Fannie May had programs in place that would allow banks to lend through mortgages to people who did not even have to file an incomme tax return and finanace at 100% of property value on the ARM plan.WHERE ARE THE BANK REGULATORS????
So far Obama has made those greedy bankers the sole whipping boys, when in fact Fannie and Freddie either need to be completely privatized or de-privatized. Or else I want the government to issue me shares in them instead of pi$$ing away my tax dollars. At least then I could sell them and get my money back.Why should my tax dollars go to buy votes for the Obama Junta?Why should those who havent worked and saved have 6 bedroom homes with pools in the back and a Caddy in the drive?
Ooops sorry, I forgot, its wealth redistribution!Its making more construction jobs in a market thats already 200% over built!BASTARDS!
GET YOUR ACORN PROMOTED MORTGAGE TODAY!GET A MORTGAGE TO FUND THAT BROTHEL/CRACKHOUSE YOU HAVE ALWAYS WANTED!
Nauseating. These evil government banks need to just DIE.
I suppose we can put to use all the printing presses of the dying newspapers. Even print the bills on newsprint.
Pretty soon, like the old copper penny, it will cost more than a dollar to print a cotton dollar bill, so we will have go to rag paper.
Fitting.
Obama=Mugabe
Oh boy! Free money! I love free money, don’t you? Now when do I get my pony?
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