U.S. Banking System Slammed With Its Own 9/11 Magnitude Catastrophe Shaking It To Its Core.
(posted with permission)
As predicted on this website
http://www.saneramblings.com, the U.S. government with potentially billions and possibly trillions of dollars of taxpayer liability was forced to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
They did this because if these institutions had collapsed they would have taken the U.S. mortgage market and the real estate housing market with them, because Fannie and Freddie now guarantee or underwrite nearly all of the mortgage business.
Here's the magnitude of the explosion. Fannie and Freddie together have a staggering $7 trillion of debt and no-one yet knows how much of that debt taxpayers will be responsible for or how much of it may go bad.
According to independent research firm CreditSights, Fannie and Freddie have $1.5 trillion of their own debts, over $5 trillion in mortgage debt obligations and $2.3 trillion of exposure in derivatives contracts. Derivatives can pay big returns but are commonly thought of as highly risky.
To put this in perspective, the U.S. government's massive $4.6 trillion in debt pales in comparison to Fannie's and Freddie's liabilities. By rescuing them, the U.S. taxpayer's obligations could multiply fast.
You might ask yourself, where were the government regulators who were supposed to oversee Fannie and Freddie, should we as taxpayers bailout giant corporations because they're "too big to fail," how many more huge firms are we taxpayers going to bailout and will we go broke doing it?
Please continue to read this column for further updates as together we work our way through this financial crisis and take steps to protect ourselves.
This column begins here:
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