Free Republic

It took a $142 billion taxpayer bailout to convince the Obama Administration to pledge in February to wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, rein in the Federal Housing Administration and encourage the revival of a private mortgage market. So it's distressing to see Congress move in exactly the opposite direction less than a year later, with the quiet approval of the White House. While cable TV is chasing the trivia of Fannie and Freddie bonuses, the real news is that late Monday a bipartisan Congressional committee announced an agreement to increase FHA's maximum mortgage limits to $729,750 from $625,500...

Especially since Mr. Gingrich was never a natural Freddie antagonist anyway. As big-government libertarian, he rather liked the idea of subsidizing homeownership. He also collected millions from health-care interests, and he supported a version of the individual health insurance mandate. These were once respectable ideas in GOP circles. Yet the inconvenient fact remains: Mr. Gingrich had placed himself, from the perspective of 2011, on the wrong side of the housing policy debate.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is stepping up his defense of his lucrative consulting career, in part by arguing that he didn’t do very much to earn all that money. In an interview late Thursday on Fox News, Gingrich said that he only worked about an hour a month giving advice to Freddie Mac, the quasi-public mortage company that paid him up to $1.8 million in fees.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Thursday that he's trying to figure out how much money he made from controversial housing giant Freddie Mac and suggested he may release the information as early as Friday. Gingrich's comments, in an interview with Fox News' Greta Van Susteren, represent the latest shift in his campaign's response to a Bloomberg News story earlier this week that said the former House speaker made as much as $1.6 million from Freddie. Initially, the Gingrich campaign promised to release details about the payment, then appeared to back off that pledge. Freddie Mac and its sister quasi-governmental...

Newt Gingrich spent the last decade being paid by big business to convince conservatives to support big-government policies that would profit his clients. Gingrich's consulting firm racked up $1.6 million in fees from the government-sponsored enterprise Freddie Mac, we learned this week from Bloomberg News. Gingrich's job was to help Freddie Mac win over conservatives to this market-distorting, bubble-fueling, housing-subsidy entity, which is now officially owned by the federal government. We also know that Growth Energy, an ethanol lobby, paid $312,500 to the Gingrich Group in 2009, according to the group's tax filing. Growth Energy lobbies to preserve many ethanol...

Rep. Michele Bachmann hit former Speaker Newt Gingrich hard on Wednesday for receiving consulting fees from mortgage giant Freddie Mac, but it turns out Bachmann herself received campaign contributions from The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation’s (Freddie Mac) political action committee during the 2007-2008 cycle. “While [Gingrich] was taking that money, I was fighting against Fannie and Freddie,” Bachmann said on Wednesday. It turns out that while she was “fighting” them, she was also taking their money.

I mean, he was the picture of righteous indignation. But when it comes to the millions of dollars in compensation, regular and bonus, paid to executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two Government-Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) that were at the very center of the sub-prime mortgage-bundling that poisoned the financial system and took down companies such as AIG, Obama’s outrage is… strangely mute. (SNIP) And yet now, instead of being spun-off as wholly private enterprises or just shut down, and while they are still being bailed out by billions in taxpayer dollars, their executives are being rewarded with tens...

Newt Gingrich has taken the lead in PPP's national polling. He's at 28% to 25% for Herman Cain and 18% for Mitt Romney. The rest of the Republican field is increasingly looking like a bunch of also rans: Rick Perry is at 6%, Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul at 5%, Jon Huntsman at 3%, and Gary Johnson and Rick Santorum each at 1%.

Now that Rick Perry and Herman Cain are seeing their stars fade, at least among the pundit class that shapes the popular news, some political observers are speculating that Newt Gingrich could be the next conservative hope for President. In the CNBC Republican Debate on Wednesday evening in MIchigan, Wall Street Journal Editorial writer John Harwood asked Newt Gingrich about his former consultant relationship with the mortgage facilitator Freddie Mac. Conservatives and Libertarians blame the Federal Government for the housing crisis that hit in 2007 and continues today. They believe the Federal Government created the housing bubble by mandating that...

The collapse of MF Global Holdings gives Americans yet another reason not to trust Wall Street. The firm filed for bankruptcy as federal regulators were looking for $600 million missing from customer accounts. Its CEO, former Democratic New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, had bet that European leaders would bail out smallish countries that were too big to fail. His bet did not pay off. The only good news out of this story is that Washington won't be bailing out MF Global. Corzine said he won't take a reported $12 million in severance. If he truly wants to atone, then Corzine...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Government-controlled mortgage giant Freddie Mac has requested $6 billion in additional aid after posting a wider loss in the third quarter. Freddie Mac said Thursday that it lost $6 billion, or $1.86 per share, in the July-September quarter. That compares with a loss of $4.1 billion, or $1.25 a share, in the same quarter of 2010. This quarter's $6 billion request from taxpayers is the largest since April 2010. Freddie's losses are increasing mainly for two reasons: Many homeowners are paying less interest because they are able to refinance at lower mortgage rates. And failing and bankrupt...

President Obama’s message to spur the economy has changed from “pass this bill” to “we can’t wait.” And mortgage rates are the impatient administration’s first target. Rather than waiting for congressional action to improve the outlook for homeowners, the White House is making it easier to refinance loans backed by the Home Affordable Refinance Program. Though the executive branch can’t legally reach into the practices of private lenders, here is a look at a list of changes (and nudges) the administration plans to implement beginning on Nov. 15:

THE mortgage business is moribund. New loans are down. New foreclosures are up. But why let a little sorry news get in the way of a good party? Last week, almost 3,000 people descended on the Hyatt Regency in Chicago for the 98th annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association... --snip-- Representative Randy Neugebauer, the Texas Republican who heads the oversight and investigations subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee, said he was disturbed by the turnout from Fannie and Freddie. It reflected a troubling “business as usual” approach by the mortgage giants, he said. “They don’t act like companies...

The protesters have been sold a bill of goods. Reckless government policies, not private greed, brought about the housing bubble and resulting financial crisis. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> There is no mystery where the Occupy Wall Street movement came from: It is an offspring of the same false narrative about the causes of the financial crisis that exculpated the government and brought us the Dodd-Frank Act. According to this story, the financial crisis and ensuing deep recession was caused by a reckless private sector driven by greed and insufficiently regulated. It is no wonder that people who hear this tale repeated endlessly in...

Regulators are nearing a settlement with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over whether the mortgage finance giants adequately disclosed their exposure to risky subprime loans, bringing to a close a three-year investigation. The proposed agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, under the terms being discussed, would include no monetary penalty or admission of fraud, according to several people briefed on the case. But a settlement would represent the most significant acknowledgement

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was a key architect of a law passed in 1992 that set Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on the road to ruin, according to a new book by Robert Stowe England to be released September 30 by Praeger. The book, Black Box Casino, uncovers the myriad factors that led to the financial crisis of 2008, the worst financial implosion of modern times. This story is one of many threads woven into the book's narrative. ACORN was a key leader in clandestine negotiations among housing activists to shape new legislation that would...

Freddie Mercury Day - on what would have been the Queen singer's 65th birthday - has been celebrated with a new Google doodle on the web giant's homepage. In the animated Google Doodle, Mercury is shown singing on stage in front of screaming fans, sat on a throne wearing a crown and dressed as a woman, and strutting about with a hoover. The accompanying video, over 90 seconds long, is set to 1978 Queen hit Don't Stop Me Now. Queen guitarist Brian May, writing on a special Google blog, said: "Freddie would have been 65 this year, and even though...

U.S. Set To Sue Big Banks Over Bad Mortgages Agency says B of A, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, others misrepresented securities By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ The federal agency that oversees the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is set to file suits against more than a dozen big banks, accusing them of misrepresenting the quality of mortgage securities they assembled and sold at the height of the housing bubble, and seeking billions of dollars in compensation. The Federal Housing Finance Agency suits, which are expected to be filed in the coming days in federal court, are aimed at Bank...

Abstract: Five of the world's richest hedge fund managers, including George Soros, the man who the broke the Bank of England, have been called to account by US politicians for their role in the collapse of the global financial system. The quintet – including John Paulson, who made $3.7bn (£2.49bn) last year betting against the US mortgage market – were grilled over their roles in buying unregulated derivatives products, which some politicians believe contributed to the financial markets' meltdown. The men, who each earned more than $1bn each last year, were called to account by Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman, who...

So far the U.S. government has bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the tune of at least $130 billion, and perhaps as much as $1 trillion. And yet, the Obama administration continues to stonewall the release of documents that could shed light on why Fannie and Freddie failed, thereby sending the economy into a tailspin from which we have yet to recover. (Those records are housed at the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) now that Fannie and Freddie are owned and operated by the federal government.)