FNM

[Art G]

Well I've been waiting and waiting, but I believe FNM has got to get bailed out by the Government and with a 5% dividend, isn't it a decent buy now? Well, isn't it

[Art G]

Is it a buy around $10?

[clifp]

It is looking interesting at around 16 to me, since the government will bail it out, but I think stock holders will have to take a hit.

[Art G]

I'm not convinced that $16 is low enough. I also believe they'll get help. Who does the Gov't help first, FNM or GM?

[al_bundy]

latest word from the White House is we'll help the GSE's, but no mercy for the shareholders

[ziggy29]

I would expect bondholders to come out of this reasonably well. The stockholders, not so much.

[copyright1997reloaded]

I looked at the preferreds on Fannie and Freddie on quantumonline, and have decided to wait. Why? non-cummulative, no stated maturity date. This tells me that if the common craters the preferred could also. (Disclaimer: I am not the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to these securities).

Anyone out there that can point me to real debt of these companies (some examples) and an indication of what they are trading at today?

Thanks

[brewer12345]

Originally Posted by copyright1997reloaded

Anyone out there that can point me to real debt of these companies (some examples) and an indication of what they are trading at today?

Thanks

Most any broker could sell you fannie and freddie bonds and MBS. The actual senior unsecured notes issued bythese companies trade at a wider than normal spread to treasuries, but still nothing to write home about, IMO. Bloomberg indicated that senior notes are trading at something like 82BP over treasuries for 10 year bonds. Put another way, with the 10 year at 3.84%, GSE senior notes would yield about 4.66%, although commissions and dealer mark-up would reduce your yield.

[ziggy29]

Actually, Fannie and Freddie bond quotes seem to be trading higher. I think there's growing belief in the credit market that the feds will bail out bondholders before letting these agencies completely fail.

Stockholders, on the other hand...

[haha]

Originally Posted by brewer12345

Most any broker could sell you fannie and freddie bonds and MBS. The actual senior unsecured notes issued bythese companies trade at a wider than normal spread to treasuries, but still nothing to write home about, IMO. Bloomberg indicated that senior notes are trading at something like 82BP over treasuries for 10 year bonds. Put another way, with the 10 year at 3.84%, GSE senior notes would yield about 4.66%, although commissions and dealer mark-up would reduce your yield.

Brewer, could you give us an idea where SLM senior debt is trading? How about credit default swaps?

Ha

[brewer12345]

Originally Posted by haha

Brewer, could you give us an idea where SLM senior debt is trading? How about credit default swaps?

Ha

Dunno, Ha, as I am remote today. Safe assumption that they are wider today, though.

[haha]

Thnx.

[copyright1997reloaded]

Originally Posted by brewer12345

Most any broker could sell you fannie and freddie bonds and MBS. The actual senior unsecured notes issued bythese companies trade at a wider than normal spread to treasuries, but still nothing to write home about, IMO. Bloomberg indicated that senior notes are trading at something like 82BP over treasuries for 10 year bonds. Put another way, with the 10 year at 3.84%, GSE senior notes would yield about 4.66%, although commissions and dealer mark-up would reduce your yield.

Brewer, thanks. I figured as such, I just hate dealing with humans, especially brokers. (I do have brokerage accounts and relationships that I've had for many, many years, but am mostly a DIY kind of person when it comes to securities selection and purchase, i.e discount brokerage.) I especially get un-trusting when it comes to bonds as I don't have a good way of determining how much I am getting hit up for in terms of spread, etc.

82BP isn't much of a risk premium...no way I'd go for that. Thanks.

[brewer12345]

Well, there you go: Fed threw open the discount widow to Fannie & Freddie. No more liquidity problems.

[ziggy29]

Originally Posted by brewer12345

Well, there you go: Fed threw open the discount widow to Fannie & Freddie. No more liquidity problems.

Which quickly brought the markets to back over flatline, which even more quickly led to a stampede of sellers taking advantage of whatever tiny rally they can get to reduce their losses by 1%...

Wow, what a horrible market this is. You know the dagger is still falling when every tiny rally is met with an overwhelming wave of selling.

[brewer12345]

Originally Posted by ziggy29

Which quickly brought the markets to back over flatline, which even more quickly led to a stampede of sellers taking advantage of whatever tiny rally they can get to reduce their losses by 1%...

Wow, what a horrible market this is. You know the dagger is still falling when every tiny rally is met with an overwhelming wave of selling.

That's OK. The big deal to me is that the Fed just removed a humongous systemic risk all in one stroke. The bond market was starting to charge the GSEs a larger and larger premium to lend them money, which could have turned into a landslide in a hurry. Fannie and Freddie ARE the mortgage market right now and their securities are on the balance sheet of just about everyone, so them getting into liquidity difficulties would have been disastrous for the world economy. Now that horrific outcome is off the table incontrovertibly, which is very important.

With the Vix spike today, maybe all the retards wiating for "capitulation" will finally be satisfied that things have cratered enough for now.

[al_bundy]

i imagine this money has to be paid back at some time, if fannie and freddie are suffering these losses how will they pay the fed back?

i've also been reading last few months that the Fed has been destroying it's own balance sheet lending all this money

[ziggy29]

Originally Posted by al_bundy

i've also been reading last few months that the Fed has been destroying it's own balance sheet lending all this money

Well, all you have to "read" is the chart which tracks the U.S. dollar.

[Hamlet]

Didn't they just deny this?

Honestly, though, I can't imagine the government not backing their bonds. They've let people think that they would for so long, that I think letting FNM or FRE default would be about the same as the government defaulting on treasuries. End of the world kinda thing.

I wouldn't touch their stocks though. What is their debt/equity ratio? Isn't it about 60:1? No thanks, I'll stick to WFC and USB.

Originally Posted by brewer12345

Well, there you go: Fed threw open the discount widow to Fannie & Freddie. No more liquidity problems.

[ladelfina]

Didn't they just deny this?

That's "today".. next week who knows?
Bloomberg.com: U.S.

If they are really doing 80% of today's mortgage biz.. allowing that to come to a halt seems beyond political contemplation (but the moral hazard and the effect on the dollar, treasuries, etc. is even more frightening).

ANALYSIS-Fannie, Freddie bailout would imperil budget, dollar - Reuters News
"it all happened so quickly" says the above article.

[August 2006] One cannot even exclude systemic risk consequences if the housing bust combined with a recession leads to a bust of the mortgage backed securities (MBS) market and triggers severe losses for the two huge GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Then, the ugly scenario that Greenspan worried about may come true: the implicit moral hazard coming from the activities of GSEs - that are formally private but that act as if they were large too-big-to-fail public institutions given the market perception that the US Treasury would bail them out in case of a systemic housing and financial distress – becomes explicit. Then, the implicit liabilities from implicit GSEs bailout-expectations lead to a financial and fiscal crisis. If this systemic risk scenario were to occur, the $200 billion fiscal cost to the US tax-payer of bailing-out and cleaning-up the S&Ls may look like spare change compared to the trillions of dollars of implicit liabilities that a more severe home lending industry financial crisis and a GSEs crisis would lead to.

RGE - Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor
oy, what a headache I have now.

http://www.rgemonitor.com/redir.php?...id=&cid=272624
BNP Paribas:

With house prices set to keep falling for the foreseeable future, losses will
likely continue to stack up for the two agencies, which have already endured
a combined hit of more than $11billion in the nine months ended March 31st.
And after recent falls, their combined market capitalisation has dwindled to
less than $19bn as leverage has skyrocketed. As of the end of March this
year, Freddie Mac’s leverage has ballooned to an unprecedented 50 times!
The US mortgage market seems to have arrived at the ultimate conundrum.
The GSEs need to keep pumping money into mortgages to keep the
mortgage market functioning but doing so appears to be fatally undermining
their financial health. As we have argued for several months, nationalisation
– partial or in extremis wholesale - may be the only long-term solution to this
paradox but, given that the GSE’s liabilities are themselves already larger
than the extant federal debt, the latter out-turn is itself barely feasible.

--
Roubini today, quoted at great length here with arguments against a bailout:
naked capitalism: Roubini: Restructure Fannie, Freddie Debt, Skip "Mother of All Bailouts"