True cost of Fannie/Freddie bailout more than twice Obama administration claim

Hot Air ^ | 6/6/11 | Ed Morrissey

[Nachum]

The CBO has a problem with the Office of Management and Budget’s calculation on the cost of the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailouts, and it’s no small calculation error. OMB has calculated the costs of the bailout at $130 billion, a number repeated on occasion by the Obama administration. By the CBO’s calculation, the cost of the bailouts reaches $317 billion, more than twice the White House estimate:

In a report delivered to the House Budget Committee on June 2, the CBO said a “fair value” accounting of guaranteeing the two defunct mortgage companies – known as Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) – was more than twice as high as the Office of Management and Budget had accounted for.

“Specifically, CBO treats the mortgages guaranteed each year by the two GSEs as new guarantee obligations of the federal government,” the CBO report said. “For those guarantees, CBO’s projections of budget outlays equal the estimated federal subsidies inherent in the commitments at the time they are made.”

“In contrast, the Administration’s Office of Management and Budget continues to treat Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as nongovernmental entities for budgetary purposes, and thus outside the budget,” the report stated. “It records as outlays the amount of the net cash payments provided by the Treasury to the GSEs.”

[Nachum]

Figures never lie, but liars figure

[Nachum]

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[FES0844]

Fuzzy math!

[rockinqsranch]

Headline: “True cost of Fannie/Freddie bailout more than twice Obama administration claim”

Excerpt: “...By the CBO’s calculation, the cost of the bailouts reaches $317 billion, more than twice the White House estimate...”

So is it a claim as in statement of fact by Obama Admin., or is it an estimate? C’mon Ed. You’re a favorite around here. Let’s get it straight. “Estimates”=wiggle room. That’s a lot of wiggling, but it’s the Democrat worms doin’ the wiggling.

[pyx]

Barney's Frank should be held legally responsible for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

At the very least, Barney's Frank is reprehensible.

[Cvengr]

Obama has more than doubled our debt and now even on the items he controls, can’t add the figures to within a third of their value. Nobody associated with this Administration is worthy of any professional trust, nor even that afforded a competent local salesman.

[Pearls Before Swine]

Next up: FHA, which is making loans at 3.5% down. It has taken over from Freddie and Fannie as the government’s property pimp in an attempt to keep prices up and forestall the day of reckoning for the banks (and the Fed, who has bought a lot of mortgage backed paper whose value is very senstitive to housing price and default levels).

[chiefqc]

No words of truth ever come from the mac daddy administration, ever.

[CharlyFord]

$317 billion is equivalent to several thousand dollars of debt per tax payer.

The Fed is real heavy into loaning the U.S. government money. Failure of that Ponzi scheme is gonna stink for a long time.

An yea! Barney Frank, along with Chris Dodd and all the other liberals that forced banks to make bad loans, through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac regulations, should go to jail. That includes Janet Rino!

[liberalh8ter]

I dare say that Obama’s wealth redistribution plan has been resoundingly successful, wouldn’t you agree?