WHY ISN'T THE MSM REPORTING FANNIE MAE'S $16.9 BILLION LOSS TODAY?

Amazing how this press release could completely slip by Bloomberg and Marketwatch. I guess Fannie Mae, which along with Freddie Mac and the FHA guarantee 95% of all the mortgages in the United States, isn’t really news worthy. It couldn’t be that our corporate MSM buries all bad news while touting every piece of good news. It seems Fannie Mae lost $16.9 billion more of your money in 2011. You own 80% of Fannie Mae, 80% of Freddie Mac and 100% of the FHA. Freddie will announce a massive loss tomorrow which won’t be covered by the MSM. The FHA is already bankrupt. Since 2008, Fannie and Freddie have lost over $200 billion of your tax dollars. But don’t worry, with the beauty of Federal Government accounting, these losses do not show up in the National Debt figures. Home prices hit a new low yesterday and they continue to fall. Fannie and Freddie are being forced to guarantee more mortgages given to deadbeats. Obama is using them for his new bullshit save the housing market schemes. By the time these fine well run organizations are finished, they will lose you another $200 to $400 billion.

The Bank Bailout’s Ugly Stepsister: Fannie Mae Still Losing Billions

The financial sector has had a tough slog in recent years, but the billions of dollars in losses that played out during and after the 2008 crisis have largely passed. That is, of course, except for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The mortgage finance giants have taken on a greater share of supporting the U.S. housing market as private players pared back their exposure in recent years, and the result has been billions of losses on the taxpayer dime. Fannie Mae reported the latest of those Wednesday, booking a $16.9 billion 2011 loss capped off by the loss of $2.4 billion in the fourth quarter.

“While economic factors such as falling home prices and high unemployment produced strong headwinds for our business again in 2011, we continued to grow a very strong new book of business as we have since 2009, “said CEO Michael Williams, who resigned in January but remains on board while the government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) looks for his replacement.Fannie Mae’s losses are still coming largely from legacy book of business (from before 2009), which led to $5.5 billion in credit-related expenses tied to declining home prices. (See “Case-Shiller: U.S. Home Prices Wrapped Up 2011 At Fresh Lows.”)

Business the company has booked since 2009, when lending standards got tighter and the excesses of the housing bubble were firmly in the rearview mirror, are starting to account for more of the firm’s net revenues but still not nearly enough to make the enterprise profitable.Part of the reason for that is the government’s ongoing support of Fannie Mae and sister firm Freddie Mac, which comes at a price.

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