Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac Catastrophe

by paradox

For once a shallow, obtuse, gossip-driven, no-memory corporate-toadie American journalism corps is of enormous benefit to the Democratic Party, for if the truth about how the US government has bailed out two strange, semi-private mortgage companies—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—in these viciously Great Recession tough times the Democrats would get absolutely blasted out of office this Fall.

Succinctly define Fannie Mae. Even the most soaked of public policy geeks can barely do it, and I’m positive my own understanding of what these companies allegedly do is woefully short. Fannie Mae was created in the Depression to subsidize home mortgages of for the little people, “freeing money” from banks by buying a 30 year mortgage at 5% (say) and then letting a little person use that mortgage at 3%, taking a loss but still capable of making money. I think that’s the bare-bones idea behind Fannie Mae.

In 1968 the Feds sorta privatized Fannie Mae, gave it stock, and created a “competitor,” Freddie Mac. Time passed, Fannie and Freddie naturally changed, morphing into general mortgage companies, kind of, things generally getting a little lost on original mission and then bersekely out of control in the insane housing bubble of the early 2000’s.

The story of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s bailout absolutely reeks to high heaven of outrageous enabling of corporate crooks or incompetents (likely both) for what could easily be a trillion dollars in little people taxpayer money, the current total is “north of $400 billion” from this brilliant diarist at Daily Kos.

Little people never get a break when their finances go to hell, they lose almost everything, go bankrupt and start over, if they can. When so many Americans are hurting so badly for bankers and their enablers at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to getting so much essentially free taxpayer money is beyond outrageous, way beyond.

Fannie Mae’s CEO “earned” $6 million dollars last year while little people money to the tune of four hundred billion dollars saved the shit-for-brains company he ran into the ground. Would the defenders of the Obama economic record please, for the love of God, finally understand nothing can ever erase the taxpayer rage this terrible circumstance engenders? Jesus, Obama hasn’t even produced a positive employment growth number yet!

Luckily for them and the Democratic Party the US has a lousy bought journalism corps with no interest in splashing sunshine across corporate malfeasance, let alone patiently staying with a story to fully explain what’s going on. Citizens paying attention only had the Diary Rescue at Daily Kos to lead to them to that excellent work on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Bob Herbert of the New York Times was brilliant yesterday in starkly laying out the total truth that if little people Americans don’t know the precise specifics of how all these corporate banking and finance crooks have had their asses frantically pulled out of the fire they damn well sure know it’s happened, they see all the unemployed workers hurting and of course they and all the rest of us are seriously pissed off about it.

Then throw two more logs onto the bonfire build: our asshole Treasury Secretary promised to fix the problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac this year and won’t, whining that “we can’t do everything.” Fuck you too, Timmy, I tell you right now that little trick will not be forgotten, this isn’t television journalism.

The “jobs bill” that passed the Senate doesn’t have one god damn dime for creating one job for the little people, seriously, nothing. Tax credits for those who hire after spending four hundred billion dollars to bail out messed up mortgage companies, Jesus Christ, the arrogance and unfeeling stupidity of it just blows the mind.

Go ahead, bring out the inverted V of job losses under Bush and Obama in the unholy misery of our Great Recession again, we’re all so sure it’s going to save our asses from the inferno of voter rage to be so deservedly released if the truth about who and how we’ve bailed out crooks every becomes widely known.

One terrible element in this disaster is that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are only one of 20 government bailout programs. If the scope of what’s been done while passing a jobs bill with no jobs spending truly sinks in with the electorate Democrats are going to get crushed in November, deservedly so.