The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Remember the big bailout of Fannie May and Freddy Mac back in 2008.
They are back asking for more -- from
Yahoo/Reuters:
Fannie Mae seeks $8.5 billion from taxpayers
Mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae on Friday said it would ask for an additional $8.5 billion from taxpayers as it continues to suffer losses on loans made prior to 2009.
The largest U.S. residential mortgage funds provider reported a net loss attributable to common shareholders of $8.7 billion, or $1.52 per diluted share, in the first quarter.
Including the latest request, the firm has taken about $100 billion from the U.S. government since it was seized in 2008, though it has also paid about $12.4 billion to taxpayers in interest.
More:
Sibling firm Freddie Mac said on Wednesday it lost just under a billion dollars in the first three months of the year, though the second-largest provider of mortgage funds did not request any new money from the government.
The two firms together have asked for about $164 billion, though their net payments have been reduced to about $140 billion as a result of the interest payments, including the latest request.
And I wonder where Barney is with all of this going on. From the
September 28th, 2008 Boston Globe:
Frank's fingerprints are all over the financial fiasco
'THE PRIVATE SECTOR got us into this mess. The government has to get us out of it."
That's Barney Frank's story, and he's sticking to it. As the Massachusetts Democrat has explained it in recent days, the current financial crisis is the spawn of the free market run amok, with the political class guilty only of failing to rein the capitalists in. The Wall Street meltdown was caused by "bad decisions that were made by people in the private sector," Frank said; the country is in dire straits today "thanks to a conservative philosophy that says the market knows best." And that philosophy goes "back to Ronald Reagan, when at his inauguration he said, 'Government is not the answer to our problems; government is the problem.' "
In fact, that isn't what Reagan said. His actual words were: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Were he president today, he would be saying much the same thing.
Posted by DaveH at May 6, 2011 5:55 PM