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It has been five years to the day since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went into conservatorship. In that time frame America captured Osama bin Laden, the nation survived Swine Flue and created another remake of Superman. But Fannie and Freddie as agencies in conservatorship live on, not changing one bit. CNBC reports on this:
Now, a short five years later, the two are making billions of dollars in profit—profit that goes straight to the U.S. Treasury. Against this backdrop, lawmakers are setting the stage for an epic debate on the future of U.S. housing finance, a future that will likely mean the end of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
"The biggest problem is that Congress wants supercheap mortgages and they want to eliminate taxpayer risk for the housing market, and that's just a holy grail to get," said Guggenheim's Seiberg. "Anything less than 100 percent government backstop is going to raise questions about whether fixed income investors are really going to be there to pick up the slack and to buy those securities."
