A Dubious Legacy

{If the short form is desirable for the time-challenged, skip the indented text in the brackets.}

"Fannie and Freddie Bailouts Cost Taxpayers $7 BILLION per Month." Not a New York Times headline but a front page story in a recent business publication. Strange isn't it that a nationally prominent newspaper that proudly proclaims daily on its masthead, the slogan "All the News That's Fit to Print" would not think this is a mega-troubling story that is worthy of notice and closer scrutiny. Oops, I take that back, Paul Krugman of the NY Times reported blithely the following in 2008: "The storm over these particular lenders is overblown. Fannie and Freddie probably will need a government rescue." Drinks on the house. Go figure.

While our government continually attacks the Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanleys of Wall Street for their alleged financial malfeasance, two government sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, aka "gov's darlings" continue unabatedly to bleed money...billions of dollars per month of our money. While the government pursues the private purse snatchers they turn a deaf ear and blind eye to public bank robbers. Sadly, our government seems more hellbent on dishing out "bully pulpit justice" against the private sector while giving a "pass" to the public sector. Go figure.

In the past two weeks, Fannie Mae reported a $16 BILLION 1Q loss for 2010 and Freddie Mac asked the Treasury for another $11 BILLION. Between these two mind-numbing losers, they have received over $150 BILLION of our dollars to carry on their dubious legacy of being the "Greece amongst us", since 2008. In December, the Treasury announced that is was not imposing the $400BILLION loss cap on Tweedledee and Tweedledum creating a no limits on liability. In fact, our government is so tone-deaf and myopic when it comes to addressing Fannie and Freddie's continuing meltdown, that restructuring or abandonment of the two are not included in the government's financial "reform" bill. Go figure.

{Incidentally, for those of you keeping score, the largest government bailouts since 2008 are: TARP $700B of which $550B has been committed; AIG $70B; General Motors $51B; Chrysler $13B; GMAC $17B. Of the TARP Funds disbursed to the major Wall Street firms and banks all have paid back their government loans plus interest equally about $187B, including: Goldman Sachs, BOA, JPM, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, PNC, US Bankcorp and Capital One to name a few. The largest beneficiaries of the government's largess and our pocketbooks are the two sickly darlings Fannie and Freddie. To date Fannie Mae is into our wallets to the tune of $84BILLION ranking #1 in the dubious rankings of King of Alltime Slacker. Coming in at #3 is it's lame counterpart Freddie Mac $62BILLION.}

So what's in that reform bill that Senator Dodd, he of the "FOA" payouts, is crafting? I suspect more governmental assaults and controls on the private sector and scant attention to the daily blood suckers known as Fannie and Freddie.

This case is just another example of our government not governing. As a wise sage once said of our democracy: "...designed by geniuses so that it can be run by idiots." The continuing nightmare of Fannie and Freddie is case in point.