Apology to Barney, Barack and Bernanke: I Forgot You’re Exempt From Our Laws

Townhall Finance ^ | Aug 14, 2013 | John Ransom |

[Cheerio]

I want to apologize for doubting those guys, Barney, Barack and Bernanke.
Turns out that giving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac $188 billion wasn’t going to entail any risk at all to the government, its employees, agents and beneficiaries.

Richard Lehmann has the details in Forbes.

“In fact, the two organizations [Fannie and Freddie] have repaid $146 billion of the $188 billion advanced to them since they were taken over,” write Lehmann. “In addition, some $90 billion of ‘profits’ were paid to the Treasury that went toward U.S. debt and deficit reduction.”

[Cheerio]

[CMailBag]

Barney has a new job

[Toddsterpatriot]

The Fed, with its quantitative easing program, is simply buying $40 billion monthly in packaged mortgage MBS securities valued at prices that are giving Fannie that wonderful profit.”

The Fed doesn't buy MBS from Fannie.

So the government gave Fannie and Freddie money to bail them out and then bought their product- that is mortgage bonds- via the Federal Reserve, which is taking losses on those transactions?

Taking losses? They bought MBS yielding 6%, 5%, 4% and paid for it with cash yielding 0.25%.