Balance Sheet Ugly at Government Sponsored Entities

U.S. Rethinking Roles of Fannie, Freddie - Smart Money NEW YORK (Dow Jones) — America’s $11 trillion home-mortgage market is heading for a makeover. Mortgage lending in the U.S. relies heavily on institutions set up in the 1930s by politicians and government officials seeking remedies for the Great Freddie Mac Increases Support for Ailing Home Loan Market - Washington Post Freddie Mac increased its support for the nation’s ailing home loan market in October, in part p... more

How can we reduce risk for individuals? That’s a natural question when a financial crisis has vaporized trillions of dollars of personal wealth in residential real estate and financial instruments. The problem is, when you try to reduce risk for individuals too much, you end up making things much riskier. By Michael Barone The Washington Times Case in point: The financial system over the last decade. Our current difficulties arose from “the idea,” as Nicole Gelinas descri... more

By Katy Stech The Post and Courier Monday, December 1, 2008 Two top groups that insure home mortgages are trying to shed their Scrooge-like reputations during the holiday season. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac , government-sponsored enterprises that back the bulk of U.S. mortgages, recently announced plans to suspend foreclosure proceedings and evictions between Nov. 26 and Jan. 9. The move gives troubled homeowners more time to sign up for a government program that could ma... more

Copyright RealCentralVA.com, LLC. If you are not reading this at RealCentralVA.com the site you see is likely stealing content. My thoughts and prayers go out to Tanta, her friends and family and any and everyone who read her on Calculated Risk. She had an ability to explain financial matters in a cogent and humorous way that will be greatly missed. I personally learned a lot from her and am grateful. Read more at Calculated Risk and the New York Times . ... more

Many of you have already heard that Calculated Risk’s co-host, Tanta, passed away yesterday. http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2008/11/sad-news-tanta-passes-away.html She once asked the CR audience for some current data on neg-ams, which I had so I sent it along.  She replied with a warm thank you, and left me thinking that, for someone who has 75,000 daily readers, she sure is as kind and humble as she seems on the blog. It’s moments like that which restore my confiden... more

Doris Dungey, alias Tanta, bloggeuse à Calculated risk , est morte hier d’un cancer, à l’âge de 47 ans. Grâce à elle, Calculated Risk aura été l’un des blogs les plus informés et prescients sur la crise financière : personne ne disposait comme elle de ce mélange de connaissance intime des marchés de crédits immobiliers, et d’un style brillant, lui permettant de faire comprendre avec brio les sujets les plus complexes. Son style est entre autres bien rendu pa... more

Barry Ritholtz of The Big Picture, on the National Association of Realtors… My apologies for lumping in the Realtor’s group with drug abusers. In doing so, I meant no insult to the crackheads of the world… Heh. Tagged: National Association of Realtors ... more

I was shooting for a leg amputation instead The New York Times called for the death of blogging, or maybe that’s death from it. No need to link to it - the echo chamber takes care of all your referencing needs . While folks throughout the world were keeling over on their keyboards, I was out on a river Sunday. We had sun for about ten seconds, and snow flurries for the other seven hours. The water’s edge was icy, and the water itself was roughly one degree warmer. I made th... more

Does anyone see confusion between the leading story and those following? Compliments of Yahoo! Finance Tagged: financial media ... more

Paul Kedrosky says Barry Ritholtz is a perma-bear . Mr. Ritholtz’s latest claim, that a short fund manager’s April Fools Day memo caused today’s market rally might lend credence to the claim, but I am not buying it. One need look no further than the links Mr. Ritholtz points to in his post. Each and every piece of cheerleading which referenced “the memo” has now been wiped clean, meaning the so-called journalists have tacitly admitted to being hoodwinked. ... more