Re: .S. Ends Cap on Fannie, Freddie Lifeline for 3 Years
Flash Alert
16:30:00 EST Boxing Day
Saturday, December 26, 2009
T'was the night before Christmas...
...and all was not quiet in the house
and it sure as hell ain't It's A Wonderful Life if you got a mortgage
U.S. Treasury turning America into a Hell hole like Pottersville
Nick note: This is one of the saddest emails I've ever written. The implications are tragic. It means there isn't a chance in hell the little guy's real estate can ever come back. Most everyone who has a mortgage will take a wipeout. Home ownership for the average American is over my friend.
This is the part of my job I hate. Right smack dab in the middle of the holiday season, the bastards do their evil work. So I have no choice. I must report to you the story.
It's more of the same. A bailout, with huge bonuses for the bankers. A wipeout for the people who just want to go to work, have a house, raise some kids and put them through school. Thank God there's a third way, for people like us, who are prepared for what's coming and know what to do.
Scrooge just struck again.
The past several years Wall Street, the investment bankers and government have perfected a favorite trick. They sneak out bad news in the dark of night. That's when as few people as possible are around to hear it.
For example, the FDIC usually closes banks over weekends. They swoop in, seize the assets, fire management, and do their dastardly deeds when markets are closed, and can't react.
I wish they would apply the same accounting standards to the big money center banks. Every single one of them would be closed down by morning.
Instead, the FDIC systematically shuts down only the smaller regional banks. They destroy local competition from the banking system. This consolidates power and assets into the hands of the big, dead-broke banks.
The quietest time of all has to be the night before Christmas. In the financial world, almost no one is around. (Except a nut like me.)
No surprise, then, that they chose that time to take one of their most dangerous, underhanded actions ever: a multi-trillion dollar bailout. Their biggest yet.
As you know, I've been quiet lately. Deep in research. Watching the dominoes fall, as sovereign government debt starts to default en masse. (Like Dubai, and soon Greece, Spain, Mexico, Italy and Ireland, to name a few.) I will soon post a tape and special report on this. To say the least, it's serious.
But now I have something truly astonishing and diabolical story to report to you.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are America's biggest mortgage lenders. 60% of all residential mortgages in the country go through them. In reality they are the nation's biggest banks. Like all banks, they are up to the gold-pin-on-their-starched collars in derivatives. They are dead broke and have been for years.
Some time ago, they were fully nationalized. Freddie and Fannie said they needed $100 billion in bailout money then. A sick joke. Congress new and authorized $400 billion. Four times as much as they said they needed. This supposedly ?guaranteed? the mortgage system was sound. Not hardly! Their combined losses are in the Trillions and mounting.
You may not be surprised to learn even that $400 billion wasn't enough. Freddie and Fannie kept losing more and more money. Now things have gotten so bad, they have been backed into a corner. They have stopped foreclosing on overdue loans. Contrary to popular myth, the housing market and mortgage defaults are still in freefall.
Many people have stopped making mortgage payments. Yet for the past year, nothing has happened to many of them. They get the usual threatening letters. But no foreclosure. No attempt to move them out of their homes. No court action.
Millions of people are in this position. Living in homes they no longer make payments on. Waiting for the sheriff to come knocking on their door to throw them out.
Why don't banks foreclose on these properties? Because they don't have the money to cover the losses.
Once they foreclose, they can't pretend any more that the loans are above water. They have to take the capital hit. They must remove the non-performing loans from their asset side of the ledger...list them as a liability... and come up with the money to cover the huge losses.
The cold, hard, ugly truth is they don't have anywhere near enough capital to do this. Their losses would be too huge. The world would know they are completely broke. They would collapse, and drag down the entire global financial system with them.
Remember, Fannie and Freddie are the biggest mortgage lenders in the world. Countless institutions hold derivatives with their mortgage paper. A default would bring down the entire banking house of cards. The global implications are terrifying.
So the mortgage crisis is being swept under the carpet with a wink and a prayer. Across the U.S., Europe and the rest of the world, bankers are holding their breath, praying for a miracle.
Here is how it works. The banks and mortgage lenders simply don't foreclose. That lets them play their mortgage shell game a bit longer. You know the fraud. Don't count trillions in bad loans...claim them at full value on their books...even though they could only get 25 cents on the dollar for them, when they finally get around to repossess the homes and liquidate them. At most.
Let me be clear here. In the U.S. alone, over $3 trillion worth of real estate loans have gone bad -? yet banks have not taken the hits on their books. Trillions more will go bad in the next 12 months. That's on top of what has already gone tits up.
Christmas Eve, we got the clearest proof yet of how bad things are. As people were celebrating Christmas, a death blow was dealt to the average American homeowner, and the U.S. housing market.
Even with all the scam banker accounting, foreclosures are soaring. In November alone, 300,000 NEW foreclosures were filed. For 2009, U.S. foreclosures will hit a staggering four million. An equal number of homes are in default, but have not been foreclosed on. For the reason I gave above.
From here on, the story gets a little complicated. But it is critical you understand. It goes to the heart of the next big leg down, in the escalating mortgage crisis and banking wipeout.
As I told you, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are stone cold broke. They are under what is called ?conservatorship.? That is a nice way of saying government owns them.
When government took over Freddie and Fannie, Congress set up a bailout fund of $200 billion apiece. That was the maximum bailout money each one could receive. Of that $400 billion total lifeline, they have officially taken $111 billion.
I am told that paperwork is filed now, that brings the total to $175 billion. Remember that is the tip of the iceberg. Banks nationwide hold trillions more in mortgage losses off the books: by the trick of not foreclosing on defaulted properties.
Just so you understand, this is taking place the world over. It has the potential to bring down governments. Spain immediately comes to mind.
As part of the Fannie/Freddie bailout, they were supposed to reduce their portfolios by 10% a year. They do this by selling (or liquidating) mortgages they hold...and not making new mortgage loans, when old ones are paid off. Let me show you how the math works.
Their combined portfolio is $2 trillion. 10% of that is $200 billion. They were supposed to reduce their mortgages (sell and/or liquidate them) by that amount each year.
Through last year, they had charged off $250 billion. They were liquidating mortgages, and getting back at most about 50 cents on the dollar.
Only the real number is worse than that. Their capital requirement was 7%: $140 billion of $2 trillion. They ran through that as well. Add that to the $175 billion bailout cash received. You see they have burned up $315 billion. In less than 12 months. And that was merely on the properties they foreclosed on and liquidated: a fraction of the bad paper they hold. The best kept secret is they will book trillions in losses as they foreclose and liquidate all the houses on mortgages gone bad.
Now Treasury has thrown out the $400 billion cap. (Which in reality Freddie and Fannie have already burned through 3 times over.) In the dark of night, on Christmas eve, as Santa Claus was making his rounds, Treasury authorized an UNLIMITED bailout for Freddie and Fannie.
They can receive trillions more to cover their huge losses.
Remember, Treasury is not bailing out the homeowner. It isn't paying for the derivatives tied to home mortgages. Treasury's new bailout only covers Fannie's/Freddie's losses: i.e. the difference of what they loaned on the foreclosed properties, and what they will get when they sell them.
I have often warned you properties will soon go for 10 cents on the dollar. Across the U.S., houses already routinely sell for 50 cents on the dollar. Many markets are approaching 25 cents on the dollar. But you ain't seen nothing yet.
(If the true numbers were revealed, the public would know many properties will not even bring ten cents on the dollar. They will get bulldozed into the earth, worth nothing.)
Treasury gave Fannie and Freddie an unlimited Christmas Eve bailout, when no one was looking, for one reason. The $400 billion Congress authorized is not enough. They need trillions more, and the last thing they want is Congressional review and public scrutiny. This action -- in the middle of the night -- lets them bury the bad news in holiday cheer.
I repeat. There is no recovery. There will not be a recovery. We are in a Depression the furthest thing possible from a inflation. Do not let the assholes fool you. The next leg down in real estate is about to occur. It will be three times worse than the fiasco we have seen already.
Freddie and Fannie still have $1.6 trillion in mortgages on their books. If they are lucky, they will get 25 cents on the dollar for these mortgages. Meaning they lose another $1.2 trillion. Probably a lot more, as real estate values collapse more. We are talking a wipe out years into the future here.
These guys have access to the best numbers in the world. Though it's a closely-guarded secret, they know the sorry ass shape their mortgage book is in. What they know -? what their actions reveal -- is that the vast majority of loans they hold will never be paid. That is why they needed trillions more in bailout money. It was that or go under.
Remember, their loan book is the core source of mortgage paper. They are a key derivatives creating machine. Like I said earlier, over 60% of all originations go through them. Please note the rest of the dead-broke mortgage derivatives business is getting no bailout of any kind.
Freddie and Fannie are winding down operations. They cannot maintain their existing portfolio. They can't expand it, either, i.e. they can't make new loans. And now they will foreclose on loans for years (three years to be precise)into the future. Treasury just gave them the funds to do so.
Thanks to Treasury, they have an unlimited guarantee. So they will not care how much they get on these foreclosed properties. (Properties they are about to repossess en masse.) With the unlimited bailout from Treasury, they have enough capital to foreclose and take the horrendous losses. Their coming fire-sale liquidations will drag the market down even further. In fact it will give new meaning to the term real estate fire sale.
Until now, the vast majority of defaulted-on properties have not been foreclosed on. They haven't been put on the market. If they had, real estate would sell for a fraction of today's prices.
Now those properties will get foreclosed in mass. They will be sold, at fire-sale prices. The unlimited Fannie/Freddie bailout guarantees it.
Which means a great tsunami of newly foreclosed properties is about to enter the market. Another round of price collapses in real estate is upon us.
It's a vicious cycle. Prices drop. More and more people go underwater on their mortgages. They owe far more than the property is worth. And the past two years have made one thing crystal clear. People who owe far more on their property than it's worth, stop making payments on it. Even if they can tote the note.
By authorizing trillions more in bailouts for Fannie and Freddie, two things happen. a) there is no incentive or mechanism to save homes from foreclosure; and b) the incentive and mechanism to foreclose homes and liquidate them at any price has greatly increased.
This is an incredible disaster. Money available for mortgages will shrink even more. At the same time, bank regulators have been forcing regional banks to sell off their mortgage portfolios. At huge losses and discounts. These are held independent of Freddie and Fannie.
So no money is available for new mortgages...the two biggest mortgage providers have just been given unlimited cash, to foreclose their bad loans, and cover the losses on their books... and the market is about to get flooded with even greater numbers of foreclosed homes crashing values even further.
How many? At least five million more foreclosures will hit the market in 2010. Those are properties people stopped paying on this year. Another five million will get defaulted on next year.
You see how bad the coming wipeout will be. Ten million foreclosures next year alone. All liquidated en masse, at the same time. Look out below.
Scrooge definitely came to town Christmas eve. Potter is proud, in the end he won.
In an incredible statement, Treasury said, ?Treasury does not expect Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to be active buyers to increase the size of the retained mortgage portfolios...?
i.e. Freddie and Fannie will NOT make new mortgage loans. They could not be any more clear. This money is to cover their losses, as they liquidate millions of foreclosed properties and book trillions in losses.
That is not all. On December 31, Treasury also ends its $1.25 trillion bond purchase program to finance new mortgages. They are also eliminating the short-term credit facility, that was set up for Freddie, Fannie and the Federal home loan banks. Why? Simple. Bail out Freddie and Fannie and screw the little guy,.
Another interesting sideline: you heard how the Obama administration is supposedly limiting pay for executives at government-owned Bank America, Citigroup and AIG. You know, making the bankers pay for their losses. Not rewarding them for wiping out the modern financial system and sending our nation back to the stone age.
More b.s.
The other day I read a regulatory filing about this. It would have been laughable, if it were not such a freaking tragedy. Fannie Mae CEO Michael Williams and Freddie Mac CEO Charles Haldeman Jr. will receive bonus compensation of $6 million each this year. That is for the wonderful job they have done bankrupting these companies. And wiping out the housing market in the process.
Also, 10 other executives at the two companies will receive a collective $30 million in compensation (bonuses) this year. An average of $3 million each.
These people have ruined the biggest mortgage lenders on the planet. Why give them tens of millions in bonuses? Because they are being paid off for their silence.
Treasury also made this unbelievable statement:
Recent announcements from the companies and the Federal Housing Administration ?demonstrate a commitment to prudent housing finance policy that enables a transition to an environment where the private market is able to provide a larger source of housing finance.?
On what planet?! Private sector bankers are going broke en masse themselves. They are drowning in a sea of foreclosures. How can they make new mortgages?
It's a sick, sad joke. They can't!
Let me help you with your scorecard. These government-owned enterprises guarantee $6 trillion of the $12 trillion in U.S. residential mortgage debt most of which will go up in smoke. We know they Freddie and Fannie have lost a third to half of the money they used to guarantee those $6 trillion in mortgages. They constantly lose more. Meaning the wipeout not only continues. Their losses gets bigger by the minute.
There is no chance of recovery. No chance of a turnaround. By giving them trillions more -? by cutting off any future lending -- we devastate the housing markets. We create a sell-only market, at the most distressed prices imaginable.
This is why we know things are about to get far worse. Amazing what goes on the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse.
But while everyone was sleeping this year, Scrooge came to town. He stole Christmas for the next 20 years. Sorry to be the bearer of such bad news. But I new you wanted to know.
Nick Guarino, Dw. X
Dish Washer Extraordinaire
Kottura LTD 3000 Des Laurentides Blvd, Suite 12-217, Laval, Qc H7K 3G5 Canada
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