Geithner: Fannie, Freddie losses were 'avoidable,' pledges bipartisan overhaul

[The Northerner]

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Tuesday that the failures at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were "avoidable" and that lawmakers must forge a bipartisan overhaul of the housing finance giants.

Congress and the Obama administration are at the beginnning of a debate on how to rewrite the housing finance system, with Geithner saying there is "no clear consensus" yet on how to reform Fannie and Freddie. The two mortgage finance giants were bailed out by taxpayers in 2008 after suffering massive losses as the housing market plummeted.

Once quasi-governmental entities, the companies received just under $150 billion in federal taxpayer aid. The housing agencies and other federal efforts now guarantee roughly 90 percent of all mortgages. The housing market continues to struggle with mounting foreclosures weighing down the broader U.S. economic recovery.

"To be clear, the government's footprint in the housing market needs to be smaller than it is today," said Shaun Donovan, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/banking-financial-institutions/114593-geithner-fannie-freddie-losses-were-avoidable-pledges-bipartisan-overhaul

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Every time somebody in this administration says "bipartisan,"

vaseline sales jump across the country.

[leftofcool]

2. ouch!

[jtuck004]

3. Great. They are spending time messing around with

Fannie and Freddie, whose default rate is 1/6 of that of the private mortgage companies, whose guidelines kept them out of the most horrendously large loans unsubstantiated by income or assets. All the while the people who caused this mess by removing regulation over the past 40 years and threw 30 million people under the bus are walking around finding new ways to keep their activies out of the loop.

And the secretary of HUD wants to make the government portion even smaller, leaving more in the hands of the market that has treated everyone so well.

[sendero]

4. Once again..

... the intrepid Obama administration is going to close the barn door for real now that all the horses are gone.

Fannie and Freddie are insolvent, the taxpayers are already on the hook for hundreds of billions.

Thanks morons.