Fannie, Freddie Delisting Signals Firms Have No Value

By Jessica Holzer and Jacob Bunge
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--The regulator for Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) ordered them to voluntarily delist their shares from U.S. stock exchanges Wednesday, underscoring that the once-mighty mortgage behemoths no longer have value as private firms.
The move comes as the Obama administration begins to shift its focus to the future of the companies, which were seized by the federal government in September 2008 and are on track to becoming the largest recipients of bailout dollars in the financial crisis.
The company's regulator, Federal Housing Finance Agency Acting Director Edward J. DeMarco, cited stock-exchange rules related to minimum share-price levels as the basis for his action. But his hand was not forced by such rules.
"This is a positive step," Phillip Swagel, a former Treasury Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy during the Bush administration, argued. "It signals that these guys are going to come out [of conservatorship] in a different form and that the existing shareholders are not going to get anything."
Facing criticism from Republicans for not spelling out the fate of Fannie and Freddie, administration officials have indicated they will turn to the matter once Congress wraps up work on financial-overhaul legislation. Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams said Wednesday's action "does not imply any direction of any future reforms or preference of corporate form" for the companies.
Freddie Mac said it expects the delisting of its common and preferred stock will happen by July 8. Fannie Mae indicated it will be delisted in early July.
The companies' shares will now be traded in the over-the-counter market where they will be quoted on the OTC Bulletin Board, typically the domain of untested companies and more speculative stocks. They will still file disclosures with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The companies' share prices plummeted on the morning announcement; Fannie's and Freddie's stock closed down nearly 40% to 56 cents and 76 cents, respectively, in Wednesday trading. Meanwhile, the roughly three dozen publicly-traded preferred securities issued by Fannie and Freddie were punished nearly as severely, posting declines of 14% to 46% in Wednesday afternoon trading.

Fannie's and Freddie's shares have limped along since the federal government seized them. The U.S. Treasury acquired ownership of 80% of each company's common stock and agreed to pump in capital as needed to keep the companies solvent. The government has so far injected $145 billion and losses at the company continue to mount. In exchange for the capital, the federal government has received preferred shares in the same amount carrying a 10% coupon.
Any money the companies make goes to paying the dividend on the government's shares.

Fannie's and Freddie's shares had become the province of day traders taking bets on the company's future after institutional investors fled the stocks and Wall Street equity analysts dropped them from their coverage. Trading has remained intense, however, with the shares often making the New York Stock Exchange daily list of most heavily-traded shares.
Since their federal takeover, Fannie and Freddie have functioned as tools of the administration's strategy to keep mortgage credit flowing and help homeowners avoid foreclosure. The Treasury's preferred stock agreements with Fannie and Freddie effectively guarantee the companies' debt.
The two mortgage giants have struggled mightily since the housing bust. In May, Fannie requested another $8.5 billion in government aid. Meanwhile, Freddie said it would need a $10.6 billion injection from the Treasury.
The shares of both companies first sank below the New York Stock Exchange's $1 30-day average price requirement in the fall of 2008. Companies that see their stock trade below that level for 30 consecutive days typically are given six months to correct the issue or face delisting.
When Fannie and Freddie slipped into the warning zone, they got a longer-than-usual period to buoy their stock price thanks to a temporary suspension of NYSE Euronext's listing standards in late February 2009. Those listing standards were reinstated in August 2009, but both companies traded above the minimum price at that time.
Over the past 30 days, Fannie Mae's average share price sank once again below NYSE's minimum requirement. Freddie's share price didn't violate the $1 minimum, however.
DeMarco, in a press release, said it "simply makes sense" for Freddie to delist because it "fits with the goal of a conservatorship to preserve and conserve assets."
Pulling their stocks off the NYSE will save the two companies $500,000 apiece in annual listing fees, as both companies paid the maximum amount due to the large number of shares outstanding, according to NYSE Euronext.
Fannie and Freddie watchers weren't surprised by the regulator's action. Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), the top Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, said in a press release the move confirmed Fannie and Freddie weren't real companies anymore.
"De-listing is the appropriate message: That these companies have no value and they shouldn't be traded as if they're real companies," said Bose George, an analyst for Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc.
-By Jessica Holzer, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-9228; jessica.holzer@dowjones.com (Maxwell Murphy and Nathan Becker contributed to this report.) Al Rajhi personal loan

How The Democrats Created The Financial Crisis : Kevin Hasset

Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- The financial crisis of the past year has provided a number of surprising twists and turns, and from Bear Stearns Cos. to American International Group Inc., ambiguity has been a big part of the story.

Why did Bear Stearns fail, and how does that relate to AIG? It all seems so complex. But really, it isn't. Enough cards on this table have been turned over that the story is now clear. The economic history books will describe this episode in simple and understandable terms: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exploded, and many bystanders were injured in the blast, some fatally.

Fannie and Freddie did this by becoming a key enabler of the mortgage crisis. They fueled Wall Street's efforts to securitize subprime loans by becoming the primary customer of all AAA-rated subprime-mortgage pools. In addition, they held an enormous portfolio of mortgages themselves.

In the times that Fannie and Freddie couldn't make the market, they became the market. Over the years, it added up to an enormous obligation. As of last June, Fannie alone owned or guaranteed more than $388 billion in high-risk mortgage investments. Their large presence created an environment within which even mortgage-backed securities assembled by others could find a ready home.

The problem was that the trillions of dollars in play were only low-risk investments if real estate prices continued to rise. Once they began to fall, the entire house of cards came down with them.

Turning Point
Take away Fannie and Freddie, or regulate them more wisely, and it's hard to imagine how these highly liquid markets would ever have emerged. This whole mess would never have happened.
It is easy to identify the historical turning point that marked the beginning of the end.

Back in 2005, Fannie and Freddie were, after years of dominating Washington, on the ropes. They were enmeshed in accounting scandals that led to turnover at the top. At one telling moment in late 2004, captured in an article by my American Enterprise Institute colleague Peter Wallison, the Securities and Exchange Comiission's chief accountant told disgraced Fannie Mae chief Franklin Raines that Fannie's position on the relevant accounting issue was not even ``on the page'' of allowable interpretations.

Then legislative momentum emerged for an attempt to create a ``world-class regulator'' that would oversee the pair more like banks, imposing strict requirements on their ability to take excessive risks. Politicians who previously had associated themselves proudly with the two accounting miscreants were less eager to be associated with them. The time was ripe.

Greenspan's Warning
The clear gravity of the situation pushed the legislation forward. Some might say the current mess couldn't be foreseen, yet in 2005 Alan Greenspan told Congress how urgent it was for it to act in the clearest possible terms: If Fannie and Freddie ``continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road,'' he said. ``We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.''

What happened next was extraordinary. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets.

Different World
If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.

But the bill didn't become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn't even get the Senate to vote on the matter.

That such a reckless political stand could have been taken by the Democrats was obscene even then. Wallison wrote at the time: ``It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit. The Democrats and the few Republicans who oppose portfolio limitations could not possibly do so if their constituents understood what they were doing.''

Mounds of Materials
Now that the collapse has occurred, the roadblock built by Senate Democrats in 2005 is unforgivable. Many who opposed the bill doubtlessly did so for honorable reasons. Fannie and Freddie provided mounds of materials defending their practices. Perhaps some found their propaganda convincing.

But we now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.

Throughout his political career, Obama has gotten more than $125,000 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, second only to Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, who received more than $165,000.

Clinton, the 12th-ranked recipient of Fannie and Freddie PAC and employee contributions, has received more than $75,000 from the two enterprises and their employees. The private profit found its way back to the senators who killed the fix.

There has been a lot of talk about who is to blame for this crisis. A look back at the story of 2005 makes the answer pretty clear.

Oh, and there is one little footnote to the story that's worth keeping in mind while Democrats point fingers between now and Nov. 4: Senator John McCain was one of the three cosponsors of S.190, the bill that would have averted this mess.

(Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Bloomberg News columnist. He is an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in the 2008 presidential election. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this column: Kevin Hassett at khassett@aei.org