Is the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rescue the beginning of the end of the crisis?
By James Quinn, Wall Street Correspondent
As Daniel Mudd walked into the Washington DC offices of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) on Friday afternoon, the chief executive of Fannie Mae knew it was the beginning of the end.
Flanked by his in-house lawyer, and by H. Rodgin Cohen, head of Wall Street law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, he was resolute.
Within 15 minutes, Jim Lockhart, head of the newly created FHFA, had begun to explain the process by which Fannie, along with younger brother Freddie Mac, would be nationalised.
The process ends a 70-year experiment that began as an attempt to get a struggling nation back on to its feet, and has ended in the largest privatisation in history.
Although neither Fannie nor Freddie owned or invested in mortgages given to those with poor credit histories, they have been tainted in a spectacular way by the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US.
Is the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rescue the beginning of the end of the crisis? - Telegraph
