Calculate your site FeedRank Today
FeedRank, a newly developed algorithm for ranking RSS feeds only on RSSMicro
Click here to learn more
 5/10 Good --- thecurrent.theatlantic.com http://feeds.feedburner.com/theatlantic/TZRn
Tuesday, May 06, 2008 --- 80 days ago http://thecurrent.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/05/fannie-mae.php
| Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored lending giant, posted an unexpectedly large $2.2-billion loss in the 2008's first quarter. How could one be less optimistic than a Wall Street housing analyst? Ask Fannie Mae, which just told analysts they'd strayed a little too far onto the sunny side. Expected to lose 81 cents a share on its gigantic portfolio of mortgages and securities, today the institution announced it had lost $2.57 a share, thanks to plummeting house prices and soaring delinquencies. Markets were taken aback. Fannie Mae, along with brother institution Freddie Mac, buys more than 75% of the mortgages in the United States. When it sneezes, your house gets double pneumonia. By 11 am, the stock was off by 7%, and the Dow was down too. The timing is infelicitous. People have just begun wondering if the worst of the financial-market crisis is behind us. But it's hard to look at Fannie Mae's results without at least a flutter of foreboding. Moody's has downgraded its financial strength rating, housing inventories are rising, and homebuilder D. R. Horton today announced a $1.3-billion loss.
The timing isn't good for Fannie Mae itself, either (not that there's ever a great moment to announce that you've lost massive amounts of money). The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, its regulator, is still requiring Fannie Mae to maintain surplus capital as part of a settlement regarding accounting problems. Thos ... |
|
|
Recent Posts
|
|
|
Facebook Del.icio.us Digg StumbleUpon Reddit Google
Anytime
