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By Alec Wilkinson
$15.61
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By Gay Talese
$18
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AP/Charles Dharapak
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By Robert Scheer — Here’s a get-out-of-jail-free card, and while we’re at it, take this obscenely huge bonus for having wrecked the economy.
Posted on Feb 1, 2013
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Flickr/respres (CC-BY)
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By Jesse Eisinger, ProPublica —
Freddie Mac, the taxpayer-owned mortgage giant, made it harder for millions of Americans to refinance their high-interest-rate mortgages for fear it would cut into company profits, present and former Freddie Mac officials disclosed in recent interviews.
Posted on Oct 26, 2012
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Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com (CC BY 2.0)
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At the height of the financial crisis, The Guardian identified 25 bankers, economists, politicians and financial officials who helped bring about the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. What are they up to now?
Posted on Aug 7, 2012
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woodleywonderworks (CC-BY)
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By Blair Hickman, ProPublica —
The U.S. housing crisis has been going on nearly five years, with still regular revelations about misdeeds by banks and others. Here’s ProPublica’s roundup of standout reporting on the crisis.
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AP / Cliff Owen
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By Cora Currier, ProPublica —
The Obama administration recently unveiled a string of proposals to help struggling homeowners and get the housing market back on its feet. Here are the latest of them, whether they are anything new and whether they stand a chance of going anywhere.
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AP / Manuel Balce Ceneta
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By Cora Currier, ProPublica —
Fannie and Freddie are required to help homeowners while earning profits so they can pay back the taxpayers who bailed them out. Here is our guide to the little-known federal regulator, Edward DeMarco, ultimately in charge of the two companies. You may have never heard of him, but as The Washington Post put it, he’s “the most powerful man in housing policy.”
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AP / Margarethe Wichert / dapd
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By Nomi Prins — The markets weren’t shocked by last week’s wave of pre-broadcast S&P sovereign debt downgrades. For months, the question wasn’t “if” but “when.” And true to form, just as with the U.S. downgrade, S&P’s reasoning skated the surface of prevailing wisdom.
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What’s America’s legacy in Iraq going to be? Can we read it accurately from this moment, now that the war is “officially” over? Also on this week’s rundown of topics for “Left, Right & Center” panelists Robert Scheer, Matt Miller, Chrystia Freeland and Mark Tapscott are Fannie and Freddie vs. the SEC and a farewell to Christopher Hitchens.
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Flickr / futureatlas.com (CC-BY)
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It’s a start, but let’s hope Friday’s fraud charges against six former higher-ups at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac don’t represent the only attempts that the Securities and Exchange Commission will make to hold financial executives responsible for the disastrous economic mess that’s still upon us.
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AP / Lauren Victoria Burke
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Back in July of 2008, when most of us were still blissfully ignorant about the approaching economic apocalypse, then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was very aware of some important market distress signals, and he chose to share some of those with an elite group of financial executives, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.
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Flickr / World Economic Forum (CC-BY-SA)
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Want to get a quick read on another American’s politics? Say the words Barney Frank. The Massachusetts congressman has become a distinctive presence in the House of Representatives over the last 32 years, becoming a lightning rod for condemnation and celebration, depending on where you sit. On Monday ... (more) Updated
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The impact of the Greek debt crisis is being felt across the European Union—could it affect economic growth in the U.S.? This week also brought even more strain in U.S.-Pakistani relations, if things weren’t bad enough already. Listen in as Robert Scheer ... (more)
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By John B. Taylor —
In “Reckless Endangerment,” Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner argue that cozy connections between government and the financial industry were the primary cause of the financial crisis.
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The following excerpt from Robert Scheer’s book “The Great American Stickup” details the perversion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
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Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has resigned in the wake of massive anti-government protests that lasted more than two weeks. What’s next for Egypt after this historic revolution?
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Flickr / futureatlas.com (CC-BY)
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So, remember that whole bailout thing that began a couple of years ago? It’s not over yet, at least not when it comes to those delinquent housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to new government projections, the Fannie and Freddie bailout fiasco could ... (continued)
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AP / Charles Dharapak
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By Robert Scheer — Behind the wonderfully engaging smile of this president there is the increasingly disturbing suggestion of a cynical power-grabbing politician whose swift rise in power reflects less the earnestness of his message and far more the skills of a traditional political hack.
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AP / Dennis Cook
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By Robert Scheer — There aren’t too many genuine heroes to come out of the banking disaster, but Armando Falcon is one of them—and had he been listened to, a significant part of the housing crisis could have been mitigated.
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AP / J. Scott Applewhite
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Former Fed chief Alan Greenspan faced the proverbial firing squad, or in this case the congressionally appointed Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, to answer questions Wednesday about his leadership choices at the Fed with regard to some key factors that triggered the financial implosion in 2008.
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foreclosurewearhouse.com
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Who knew the Treasury Department had such deep pockets? Well, besides all of Wall Street, we can put the beleaguered duo that is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on the list. The Treasury has obligingly removed the $400 billion cap previously assigned to the funding designated to save the two mortgage firms.
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publicradio.org
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The mortgage market got a lift following Tuesday’s announcement that the Federal Reserve was throwing in with a $600 billion resuscitation bid, but as Fortune’s Colin Barr points out, history offers at least two examples that the road ahead could be rocky.
Posted on Nov 25, 2008
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foreclosurewearhouse.com
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Starting on Nov. 26, mortgage finance mega-firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will take a time out from foreclosures and evictions until Jan. 9—a welcome holiday break for struggling homeowners that hopefully will catch on among other corporate players in the mortgage market.
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AP photo / Mary Altaffer
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By Titus Levi — Wall Street has yet to recover after the economic shocks of recent weeks. Why? Two problems. One we already know: The “plan,” even with revisions, is deeply flawed. The second problem has not been mentioned all that much because it’s pretty scary: Put simply, we have no idea what we’re doing.
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momocrats.typepad.com
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And now, this latest dispatch from the U.S. Department of Unintentional Irony: Sen. John McCain spoke out against the Federal Reserve’s recent bids to give life support (read: gigantic amounts of money) to failing financial institutions. Isn’t he the same guy who has looked to Phil Gramm for economic advice?
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AP photo / Richard Drew
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By Robert Scheer — Has the war on terrorism become the modern equivalent of the Roman Circus, drawing the people’s attention away from the failures of those who rule them? Corporate America is a shambles because deregulation, the mantra of our president and his party, has proved to be a license to steal.
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On Friday’s episode of “Left, Right & Center,” show regulars Matt Miller, Robert Scheer and Tony Blankley weigh in about the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac crisis, the fate of Lehman Brothers and Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin’s one-on-one with ABC’s Charlie Gibson.
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AP photo / Carolyn Kaster
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By Robert Scheer — Ignorance is bliss, which perhaps explains Gov. Sarah Palin being so confidently wrong about the root cause of the federalization of most of the nation’s mortgage market. But what is Sen. John McCain’s excuse?
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AP photo / Susan Walsh
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By Bill Boyarsky — With a stunningly vicious pair of blows, the faltering world economy—the Godzilla of this year’s presidential race—has made the candidates look small. Why hasn’t this looming crisis been part of the presidential debate?
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Investors have been throwing money at stock markets the world over following the news that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been placed under federal conservatorship. Some analysts are confident that the move will stabilize the mortgage giants and, in turn, a tanking housing market. With hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on the line, let’s hope they’re right.
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foreclosurewearhouse.com
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Congress to the rescue! Mortgage lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are being propped up in their time of dire need, thanks to a bill passed Saturday that will lift the world’s two largest financial institutions out of immediate danger and help some homeowners handle mortgage crises.
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The independent Congressional Budget Office has announced the expected federal taxpayer bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will appear as a $25 billion budget expense, but that the real bill could be anywhere from zero to $100 billion. This, even though the once-governmental agencies were formally privatized in 1968.
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AP photo / Kevork Djansezian
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By Robert Scheer — McCain campaign co-chair Phil Gramm is right: We have “become a nation of whiners.” But who is whining more than the bankers that former Sen. Gramm’s financial deregulation legislation benefited? The very bankers who now expect a government bailout, such as those at UBS Investment Bank, where Gramm found lucrative employment.
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Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were always more foul than fish, says Robert Borosage, and the bailout announced by the Treasury secretary over the weekend will mean “private speculators, having driven the stock down, will clean up on the upside.”
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AP photo / Ron Edmonds
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President Bush is still insisting that the U.S. economy is in generally good shape, even as he asks Congress to support legislation to help Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while insisting in the same breath that he’s not proposing a “bailout” for the ailing mortgage companies. Hmmm.
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foreclosurewearhouse.com
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Although certain Washington denizens from both sides of the aisle might have been thrown when the two government-backed mortgage finance companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, hit the skids last week, several of their current and former colleagues had long seen the crisis coming.
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