Why Fannie, Freddie and AIG All Had To Be Bailed Out

By Ellen Brown

“I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.”

– Sir Isaac Newton, after losing a fortune in the South Sea bubble

Something extraordinary is going on with these government bailouts. In March 2008, the Federal Reserve extended a $55 billion loan to JPMorgan to “rescue” investment bank Bear Stearns from bankruptcy, a highly controversial move that tested the limits of the Federal Reserve Act. On September 7, 2008, the U.S. government seized private mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and imposed a conservatorship, a form of bankruptcy; but rather than let the bankruptcy court sort out the assets among the claimants, the Treasury extended an unlimited credit line to the insolvent corporations and said it would exercise its authority to buy their stock, effectively nationalizing them. Now the Federal Reserve has announced that it is giving an $85 billion loan to American International Group (AIG), the world’s largest insurance company, in exchange for a nearly 80% stake in the insurer . . . .

The Fed is buying an insurance company? Where exactly is that covered in the Federal Reserve Act? The Associated Press calls it a “government takeover,” but this is not your ordinary “nationalization” like the purchase of Fannie/Freddie stock by the U.S. Treasury. The Federal Reserve has the power to print the national money supply, but it is not actually a part of the U.S. government. It is a private banking corporation owned by a consortium of private banks. The banking industry just bought the world’s largest insurance company, and they used federal money to do it. Yahoo Finance reported on September 17:

“The Treasury is setting up a temporary financing program at the Fed’s request. The program will auction Treasury bills to raise cash for the Fed’s use. The initiative aims to help the Fed manage its balance sheet following its efforts to enhance its liquidity facilities over the previous few quarters.”

Treasury bills are the I.O.U.s of the federal government. We the taxpayers are on the hook for the Fed’s “enhanced liquidity facilities,” meaning the loans it has been making to everyone in sight, bank or non-bank, exercising obscure provisions in the Federal Reserve Act that may or may not say they can do it. What’s going on here? Why not let the free market work? Bankruptcy courts know how to sort out assets and reorganize companies so they can operate again. Why the extraordinary measures for Fannie, Freddie and AIG?

The answer may have less to do with saving the insurance business, the housing market, or the Chinese investors clamoring for a bailout than with the greatest Ponzi scheme in history, one that is holding up the entire private global banking system. What had to be saved at all costs was not housing or the dollar but the financial derivatives industry; and the precipice from which it had to be saved was an “event of default” that could have collapsed a quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble, a collapse that could take the entire global banking system down with it.
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By Bob Chapman
The International Forecaster
September 18, 2008

Losses and bankruptcies of the major banks that we predicted, trouble for the taxpayer who now shoulder a trillion in debt from bank failures, Why do we have to bail out Wall Street fraud? Lehman Brothers left to expire, We are watching our Zombie economy implode, Buy-outs are just throwing good money after bad, Toxic waste eats your equity capital, eats your stocks, your bonds, and eats your retirement funds. 1929 all over again.

The business end of Hanky Panky Paulson’s bazooka is glowing red hot as it continues to fire round after round of high explosive moral hazard contains an up to 85 billion dollar, two-year bridge loan from the Fed to the world’s largest insurer, AIG, to be guaranteed by the US taxpayer via the US Treasury.

Warrants convertible to up to 80% of the common stock of AIG will be pledged as collateral to secure the US Treasury’s loan guarantee to the Fed, with proceeds from the sale of AIG’s now virtually worthless assets being supposedly used to pay down the loan. It’s just Bear Stearns mixed with Fannie and Freddie. You have a loan from the Fed guaranteed by the US Treasury being used to bail out AIG directly instead of being used to facilitate the assassination of BS by a predatory lender (i.e. JP Morgan Chase), and you have what will be ultimate taxpayer ownership of AIG’s toxic waste by having common stock pledged as collateral instead of being purchased through equity injections, as with Fannie and Freddie.

The Treasury’s potential 80% ownership greatly dilutes the value of the existing common shareholders, and the Treasury has been given the right to stop dividend payments on both common and preferred stock of AIG shareholders, which means basically that they have both just been vaporized. The Fed’s Fascist Follies continue.

You, the US taxpayer, will now not only end up owning nearly worthless stock in these corporate cesspools, you have assumed all of their liabilities up to the amount of the loans/capital injections. Remember, the bondholders are still ahead of you!!! BS was $29 billion (plus), Fannie and Freddie are $300 billion just for openers, soon to grow into a loss in excess of one trillion, perhaps even as much as two trillion or more, and now we pour another 85 billion into the pot of boiling moral hazard for AIG. As we inhale the radioactive fumes from the detonation of this latest round of DU laced moral hazard, the stock markets and the dollar rally, while gold and silver decline, all thanks to the manipulation of markets that are rigged daily by the same scum who are bailing out the fraudsters. It is nothing short of surreal.
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By Darryl Robert Schoon

Last weekend started early for Timothy Geithner, President and CEO of the New York Federal Reserve. At 6 pm, Friday, Geithner called an emergency meeting to discuss the possible collapse of Wall Street investment bank, Lehman Bros.

The troubles of Lehman Bros had worsened during the previous week and the current Fed playbook dictated a solution be found on the weekend to calm financial markets opening Monday; but, this weekend, the Fed playbook came up empty, Lehman Bros. declared bankruptcy.

It’s official. The storm is here. In How To Survive The Crisis And Prosper In The Process, I predicted a global financial crisis would happen where real estate prices would fall 40-70%, stock markets would crash and a Great Depression would result.

Eighteen months later, the median price of housing in California is down 40 %, global stock markets are in disarray and although another depression has yet to begin, this weekend’s failure of Lehman Bros combined with the pressured sale of Merrill Lynch and the prospect of an AIG collapse are clear signs that we are now that much closer to the predicted end.

This is the end of a system. It is not a cyclical correction. It is not a market pullback and it is not a repricing of risk in an otherwise resilient marketplace. We are witness to the end of an economic system based on credit-based paper money that began 300 years ago in England. All beginnings have endings—and that we didn’t expect it to end doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t.

THE BANKERS’ BEGGING BOWL

Because Lehman Bros.’ CEO Richard Fuld received a $22 million bonus for his “work” in 2007 or perhaps because Fed officials had been openly criticized at their annual Jackson Hole soirée for their continuing bailouts of US investment banks, last weekend US officials unexpectedly informed Wall Street bankers that a government bailout of Lehman Bros. was not possible.

There is no political will for a Federal bailout…

Timothy Geithner, September 12, 2008

Geithner’s statement really means that Wall Street no longer possesses the requisite political muscle to extract more US dollars from a bankrupt electorate. Last weekend, Wall Street bankers finally understood that their privileged position in the welfare line of US government largesse had come to an end. This time, the banker’s begging bowl would remain empty.

With their co-conspirators in the US government no longer able or willing to provide additional US guarantees, the position of investment banks has now become increasingly fragile; and their newly hatched liquidity plan concocted by the bankers over the weekend is another indication of just how fragile their system is.
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by Bill Holter

To all; we are now entering uncharted territory. The government seizure of FNM and FRE opens up the next and terrifying chapter of the credit crunch. As I have posited many times before, this has NOW ENDED UP IN THE LAP OF THE U.S. TREASURY! The Treasury is now the backstop to all things paper. This will be a real life “Atlas shrugged”. There are huge implications to this step. The Treasury will now have between $5-6 Trillion of mortgage loans added to its balance sheet. The Treasury is in a huge deficit already to the tune of $10 Trillion of funded liabilities and over $70 Trillion of unfunded future liabilities. It is over. The U.S. Treasury is broke. This will take the entire banking system with it. The banking system will need to writedown $36 Billion of Fannie and Freddie preferred stock that is carried as core capital. This means at a 6% reserve ratio, that another $500 Billion of credit must be withdwrawn to keep capital ratios from collapsing. The Treasury stimulus plan was $140 Billion [remember those $600 checks]. Now 3 times that amount will have to be withdrawn from the credit pool unless Treasury doesn’t magically credit these banks with $36 Billion.

There is no telling how much the carried loans are really worth in todays market as even prime loans are only fetching .80 cents on the Dollar. This will cost at least $1 Trillion at a minimum for starters. It will all be printed. The credit rating of the U.S. will be downgraded, the interest rates the Treasury will now have to pay will increase substantially. This is so Dollar negative it goes beyond words to describe it. The borrowing ability of the Treasury is now being hamstrung by the same credit crunch that we were assured last Sept. was “contained”. I’m sorry but the ruse is over. A government running a deficit can only do two things to cover the gap, borrow more or print. They can’t raise taxes because that will implode the economy even worse than it already is. They will find it more and more difficult to borrow the sums needed until the auctions begin to fail. Then the “black helicopters” will be out in full force spreading freshly printed Dollars. The dilutive effect to the Dollar will be astonishing. We are entering the Weimar Republic phase. The Treasury will be crushed under debt and the Dollar [Fed] will be crushed through overissuance of new currency used to buy the Treasury debt.
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by James McShirley

Now we know. The giant black hole of derivatives at JPM is about to become the size of Jupiter. With the utter failure of Fannie and Freddie (a culmination of what I predicted 12 years ago) Fannie and Freddie’s massive derivatives portfolios can now be hidden from public scrutiny. These trillions of derivatives, which in likelihood have already failed, can now be whitewashed with the able assistance of the US taxpayer. Also the true values of their mortgage portfolios gets deep-sixed. This is no doubt the single largest financial failure in the history of the world. The Fed had every reason to previously discontinue M-3 reporting. Can you imagine what is about to happen to the dollar supply once this catastrophe starts getting paid for? Look for wild market gyrations as these derivatives get dealt with by the insiders who will now know both sides of the trade. What a deal, the taxpayer backs you and you know both sides of the trade, how can you lose? The derivatives may now become hidden from view, but the inflationary implications will become VERY evident. Another ominous problem facing FNM and FRE is a collapse in their pension plans and retirement funds. Retirees and current employees holding FNM/FRE stock will get wiped out, however a pension fund collapse would mean open revolt. This is another side-bailout I see coming.

Since FNM/FRE’s gigantic derivatives allegedly hedged against rising interest rates I think it’s safe to say you won’t be seeing any Fed interest rate hikes coming soon. This government takeover of the largest financial entity in America has in one fell swoop put into question ANY guarantee of debt, sovereign or otherwise. With this news gold should be up hundreds, maybe a thousand dollars if free markets were allowed. They will need to throw the kitchen sink at paper gold to prevent it from revealing the truth of what just happened. US Treasury bond prices now look egregiously high. This time it might not work. Next up for the weekend-only government news release program? Bailouts for GM, Ford, the entire banking industry, and who knows, if I’m hearing Bill Gross correctly maybe even PIMCO.

By Jim Sinclair

Dear Friends,

Haven’t we all had enough?

Isn’t it insulting to you when major publications carry reports that Lehman nicknamed their corporate garbage can either Spinco or BadBank?

Bad banks are a product of OTC derivatives. Spin is how black is made to look like white.

Is this simply bad humor or is Lehman giving us all the middle finger salute?

So here we have a major international investment company rubbing both spin and weak banking conditions in our face as they are bailed out via the Federal Reserve Begging Bowl window.

Illegal attacks on our gold shares are costing billions of dollars in damage and there is no Begging Bowl loan window offering us or the company’s full recovery through 28 day perma-loans. In a sense the people who appear to be giving us the bird are more than likely the brokers for those that seek to injure the gold gang. Of course they think with impunity.

These power trippers seem to be intoxicated with themselves because they have recently bit the hand that feeds them. Raids of Fannie, Freddie and Bear Stearns (amongst others) is an act of turning on their benefactors. We shall see.

Let’s not forget about Mr. Gross of Pimco, who called upon the US Treasury to bail out all financial entities that made enormous profits on OTC derivatives.

They make money and the US Treasury/Fed covers the losses. They make massive money and your children and their children bail them out.

We are attacked by the financial equivalent of Highway Men and nobody gives a damn.

Haven’t we all had enough?

Another affront of one’s intelligence, and of course part of the “Hold the Hill” strategy, is the argument being broadcast by all media (and all the Hill’s friends) that spins the story that CURRENCY VALUE IS DETERMINED BY COMPETITIVE ECONOMIC ACTIVITY.

When push comes to shove, what determines a currency’s value will be the degree of financial failures and size of the financial bailouts because these events cause the volume of paper money to increase substantially.

The value of currencies, when written off by the history of this time, will not be a function of competitive levels of economic activity but rather who held the most OTC derivatives.

The USA is the eye of this hurricane of financial weapons of mass destruction already acting true to their name.

By Darryl Robert Schoon

The engine used to run on premium, e.g. gold and silver; now it’s being run on credit which over time will destroy the engine and everything else.

The euro, the yuan, the yen, and the dollar are The Four Tires Of The Apocalypse, an event that recently appears to have come out of nowhere. It didn’t. Its apparently sudden appearance is new only to those who wished to see otherwise.

The destructive juggernaut now bearing down on the financial house of cards constructed by central bankers contained within it the seeds of its own destruction from its very beginning. Over time, those seeds would turn into Cerberus, the hound of hell, on whose mercy Bernanke et. al. now depends.

Epochs, like movies, need time to reveal protagonists and antagonists, as well as victims, villains and victors. We are now at the end of an epoch and as the final scene opens, the program notes are becoming disturbingly clear.

We find ourselves participants in the last and final act of capitalism and its credit based capital markets—or more correctly, credit and/or debt markets masquerading as free markets.

THE BIRTH OF CERBERUS
THE GENESIS OF THE JUGGERNAUT

Capitalism did not appear until the Bank of England began issuing its debt-based paper money in 1694. The issuance of credit as money gave rise to capital markets where debt-based money replaced savings-based money
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Sir Josiah Stamp was appointed a director of the Bank of England in 1928 so he was not a radical or a so called “conspiracy theorist”. One of our favorite quotes concerning the banking system was made by Sir Josiah Stamp and we think what he said back in the 1920s is very relevant to what is taking place in front of our very eyes.

He said the following: “Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits.”

For the last year we have been witness to the continuing implosion of the Western banking system. The problem, of course, has been that bankers lent money that they did not have to people that did not have the money to pay them back. Besides lending money they did not have they lent it many times over or in financial market speak they levered themselves to the hilt! Greed and bad money management has led to the bankers’ demise as house prices started turning south and the bankers’ loans started losing value.

One would think that in a supposedly free market capitalist system that we have in the Western world the banks would be allowed to fail and their depositors would have lost all their money. Unfortunately this isn’t happening and what Sir Josiah Stamp said way back in the 1920s is happening one more time now as the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England in conjunction with their respective Treasurys are creating hundreds of billions of dollars and pounds, on the back of the taxpayers, in order to shore up almost worthless securities and OTC derivatives that the banks hold. So the old process seems to be in motion again as the bankers’ assets have been taken away from them but with the flick of a pen, or by switching on a PC and typing a number one with many zeros behind it, the Fed and the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street are trying to buy back the whole world again!

It will be interesting to observe over the next few years if the American and the British taxpayer wake up and realise that they are being taken for a ride and demand real reforms that bring about a monetary system that is based on sound money and a banking system that is not controlled by a cartel of banks headed by a Central Bank.

Will we go for slavery or liberty?