How Bailouts work for Main Street, via Freddie Mac.

December 28th 2009 via the WSJ:
Obama announces UNLIMITED LOSSES for Fannie and Freddie 
Unlimited access to bailout funds through 2012 was "necessary for preserving the continued strength and stability of the mortgage market," the Treasury said. Fannie and Freddie purchase or guarantee most U.S. home mortgages and have run up huge losses stemming from the worst wave of defaults since the 1930s.

"The timing of this executive order giving Fannie and Freddie a blank check is no coincidence," said Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee. He said the Christmas Eve announcement was designed "to prevent the general public from taking note."

The Treasury removed the cap on the size of available bailout funds by amending agreements it reached with the companies in September 2008, when the government seized control of the agencies under a legal process called conservatorship. The agreement allowed the Treasury to make amendments through the end of the year, without the consent of Congress. Changes made after Dec. 31 would likely involve a struggle with lawmakers over the terms.

The companies on Thursday disclosed new packages that will pay Fannie Chief Executive Officer Michael Williams and Freddie CEO Charles Haldeman Jr. as much as $6 million a year, including bonuses.  The pay packages for top officers are entirely in cash.

Under the new packages, Fannie will pay as much as about $3.6 million annually to David M. Johnson, chief financial officer; $2.4 million to Kenneth Bacon, who heads a unit that finances apartment buildings; $2.8 million to David Benson, capital markets chief; $2.2 million to David Hisey, deputy chief financial officer; $3 million to Timothy Mayopoulos, general counsel; and $2.8 million to Kenneth Phelan, chief risk officer.

At Freddie, annual compensation will total as much as $4.5 million for Bruce Witherell, chief operating officer; $3.5 million for Ross Kari, chief financial officer; $2.8 million for Robert Bostrom, general counsel; and $2.7 million for Paul George, head of human resources.

The pay deals also drew fire. With unemployment near 10%, "to be handing out $6 million bonuses to essentially federal employees is unconscionable," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican who is a frequent critic of Fannie and Freddie.

He also criticized the administration for approving the compensation without settling on a plan to remove taxpayer supports: "To be doing that with no plan in place is just unconscionable."

November 16th 2011 via IBTimes:

How much did previous CEO's make?

James Johnson (Fannie Mae CEO, 1991-98) earned roughly $100 million in pay over his time at the company.

Franklin Raines (Fannie Mae CEO, 1999-05) earned more than $90 million from 1998 to 2003. Furthermore, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) revealed in 2006 that some Fannie senior executives (including Raines and Johnson) manipulated accounting to bolster their pay from 1998 to 2004.

Daniel Mudd (Fannie Mae CEO, 2005-08) earned $12.2 million in base pay and bonuses while heading Fannie.

Leland C. Brendsel (Freddie Mac CEO 1987-03) took home more than $28.4 million from 1993 to 2003.

Richard Syron (Freddie Mac CEO, 2003-08) earned more than $38 million in compensation while he was CEO. Syron collected $19.8 million of this pay in 2007 alone, the year before the enterprise went into conservatorship.

January 10th 2012 via ZeroHedge:

Fannie and Freddie CEO's quit, pocket millions

A few months ago we learned that outgoing Freddie CEO Ed Haldeman quit Freddie after just two years of work, pocketing over $4 million primarily to collect over $21 billion in bailout funds from the US government.  Fannie Mae CEO Michael Williams is also stepping down without a replacement, so obviously the decision was made in haste and is an indication that nobody at the helm of the two largest mortgageholders want to do anything with what Obama and the Chairsatan (Ben Bernake) have in store for the two behemoths holdings over $6 trillion in mortgages in their books. Incidentally, according to Forbes, Williams made $4.84 million in comp last year. His claim to fame: receiving a total of $60 billion in Treasury bailout cash (net of $17.2 billion in dividend payments) - hard job that one.

January 30th, 2012 via ProPublica:

Freddie Mac bets against homeowners
Freddie Mac, the taxpayer-owned mortgage giant, has placed multibillion-dollar bets that pay off if homeowners stay trapped in expensive mortgages with interest rates well above current rates.  Freddie began increasing these bets dramatically in late 2010, the same time that the company was making it harder for homeowners to get out of such high-interest mortgages.
Freddie’s charter calls for the company to make home loans more accessible. Its chief executive, Charles Haldeman Jr., recently told Congress that his company is “helping financially strapped families reduce their mortgage costs through refinancing their mortgages.”

We're here to help...

But the trades, uncovered for the first time in an investigation by ProPublica and NPR, give Freddie a powerful incentive to do the opposite, highlighting a conflict of interest at the heart of the company. In addition to being an instrument of government policy dedicated to making home loans more accessible, Freddie also has giant investment portfolios and could lose substantial amounts of money if too many borrowers refinance.
“We were actually shocked they did this,” says Scott Simon, who as the head of the giant bond fund PIMCO’s mortgage-backed securities team is one of the world’s biggest mortgage bond traders. “It seemed so out of line with their mission.”  The trades“put them squarely against the homeowner,” he says.
Freddie Mac, along with its cousin Fannie Mae, was bailed out in 2008 and is now owned by taxpayers. The companies play a pivotal role in the mortgage business because they insure most home loans in the United States. The companies’ rules determine whether homeowners can get loans and on what terms.

Struggling Homeowners

Freddie’s moves to limit refinancing affect not only individual homeowners but the entire economy. An expansive refinancing program could help millions of homeowners, some economists say. Such an effort would “help the economy and put tens of billions of dollars back in consumers’pockets, the equivalent of a very long-term tax cut,” says real-estate economist Christopher Mayer of the Columbia Business School. “It also is likely to reduce foreclosures and benefit the U.S. government” because Freddie and Fannie, which guarantee most mortgages in the country, would have lower losses over the long run.
Freddie Mac’s trades, while perfectly legal, came during a period when the company was supposed to be reducing its investment portfolio, according to the terms of its government takeover agreement. But these trades escalate the risk of its portfolio, because the securities Freddie has purchased are volatile and hard to sell, mortgage securities experts say.
The financial crisis in 2008 was made worse when Wall Street traders made bets against their customers and the American public. Now, some see similar behavior, only this time by traders at a government-owned company are using leverage, which increases the potential profits but also the risk of big losses, and other Wall Street stratagems. “More than three years into the government takeover, we have Freddie Mac pursuing highly levered, complicated transactions seemingly with the purpose of trading against homeowners,” says Mayer. “These are the kinds of things that got us into trouble in the first place.”

Albert Einstein defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result".  In our Crony-Capitalistic America, it's called a Bailout. 

Hacked Headlines

Original Content in italics. Emphasis, Sarcasm and Highlights mine.
-via Martin Crutsinger, AP
FED TO FORECAST INTEREST RATES
The Federal Reserve will now update the public four times a year on how long it plans to keep interest rates at record lows.  The Fed funds rate (which is the interest rates banks pay to borrow money from the Fed) has been at or near zero for the past three years.  Lower rates could lead consumers and businesses to borrow and spend more, and could benefit the economy.  Hooray economy!

via E Scott Reckard, LA Times
BANK OF AMERICA CALLING IN SMALL BUSINESS LOANS
Bank of America is severing lines of credit to some small businesses who have used them to stay afloat.  The bank is demanding they pay off their balances all at once instead of making monthly payments.  If they can't pay in full, they are being offered new plans for as long as five years at far higher interest rates.  One customer, Babak Zahabizadeh, was told his $96,000 debt was due January 25th.  Babak, presumably stupefied that a bailed-out "Too Big Too Fail" bank that owes it's existence to trillions in future taxpayer funds AND gets free money from the Fed would put the screws to him, responded "Dude, your're calling a guy who's barely surviving!" He was generously offered multiple alternatives to simply paying his entire loan off. One Doozy was "stretching his payments over 2 years while paying 12% interest,  10 times his current monthly payment." (Math types will note Babak's previous rate was still 1.2% higher than Bank of America's borrowing cost) Babak noted he's had to cut staff from 200 to 80 to survive the recovery this long (a typical Main Street response to a 60% decrease in business). His arguments have failed to impress the bank, whose CEO Brian Moynihan has sworn to reign in "Non-Core" investments to address losses caused by loose-lending (to people who rely on the REAL economy to pay them back) and rapid expansion.

Bullshit Sifter!

By "Non-core" Brian means "Why take any risk at all (without interest rates that would make a gangster blush) in the real economy when we can get a government guaranteed 3% rate to buy Treasury notes with no risk?  Up Yours Main Street.  Go occupy something"