Board-Ansicht
Mix-Ansicht- Fannie und Freddie Stories - die bei DowJones schneller verschwanden als sie - kingsolomon, 05.02.2003, 15:40
- und da regt sich nochmal jemand über Mietzinsgarantien in Berlin auf?:-) (owT) - nasdaq, 05.02.2003, 19:33
Fannie und Freddie Stories - die bei DowJones schneller verschwanden als sie
-->veröffentlicht wurden... Yahoo hat sie übernommen, dort stehen sie im Moment noch.
Fannie, Freddie Regulator Releases Study, Resigns
Tuesday February 4, 7:56 pm ET
By Dawn Kopecki
WASHINGTON -- A faltering in the financial health of either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, though remote, would significantly disrupt the U.S. housing market and broader financial system, a report from their federal regulator said Tuesday.ADVERTISEMENT
These findings were revealed the same day the White House asked Clinton- appointee Armando Falcon, director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, to resign from his position more than a year before he was scheduled to leave. Although Mr. Falcon wouldn't comment on the issue, the White House said that it received his resignation early Tuesday and announced its intentions to nominate former JP Morgan Managing Director Mark Brickell, a Republican, to head the young agency.
"The Bush administration and the president appreciates Mr. Falcon's service at OFHEO and wishes him well," said White House spokeswoman Ashley Snee.
Mr. Falcon still delivered during a speech to bond traders a much-anticipated two-year report on systemic risk and said the agency was pushing Congress to give it more authority to manage the companies' day-to-day operations if either should fail.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac officials, however, dismissed the agency's report.
"This simply, in our mind, is not a serious piece of policy research," said Freddie Mac spokeswoman Sharon McHale."It's based on this completely speculative doomsday scenario where we essentially wake up and are insolvent."
Fannie Mae spokesman Chuck Greener agreed:"The Falcon paper is a review of research on systemic risk and discussion of hypothetical scenarios. The director himself acknowledged these scenarios are hypothetical and quite remote."
Still, the study found the sheer size of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and volume of mortgages they purchase or secure make them an integral part of the U.S. economy and inherent risk if either were to become insolvent.
The companies own or guarantee 45% of all outstanding residential mortgages in the U.S. Their combined mortgage portfolios are valued at more than $1.2 trillion, a more than sevenfold increase since 1990. And the combined value of the mortgage-backed securities they guarantee for other investors is $1.5 trillion, a large chunk of which is held by federally insured banks, according to the study.
"A problem at an enterprise may not only directly contribute to the possibility of a financial crisis and a systemic event but may also create problems at counterparties that could translate into their contributing to such events," the report reads.
At the same time, Mr. Falcon said Fannie and Freddie have provided a source of stability in the economy over the last two years, sheltering the U.S. housing sector from undue stress and helping to mitigate systemic risk.
"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are very strong financial institutions today, and the possibility of either enterprise failing or contributing to a financial crisis is remote," Mr. Falcon said."Any systemic disruption would likely be minimal as OFHEO took prompt corrective action and other market participants filled the short-term market void."
Since his appointment in 1999, Mr. Falcon has overseen the agency in developing complicated risk-based capital rules for Fannie and Freddie. He also helped craft an agreement last July that will result in Fannie and Freddie filing their financial disclosures with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the first time ever this spring. He additionally helped author a joint study with the SEC and Treasury Department released Monday about the companies' mortgage-backed securities disclosures.
"He has assembled a superb examinations staff and has put in place a comprehensive regulatory structure," Mr. Greener said.
Speculation about Mr. Falcon's departure Tuesday left the markets uneasy, analysts said.
"I don't think you'll see either of these companies trade up significantly with this news, but political risk with respect to these companies is still an important part of Fannie and Freddie's story," said Andrew Parmentier, a policy analyst with investment house Friedman, Billings, Ramsey, which is just outside Washington."Investors think that a new regulator can ease some of those worries over time."
OFHEO nominee Mark Brickell is currently the chief executive of Blackbird Holdings Inc., an electronic trading system for derivatives contracts. He spent 25 years with JP Morgan and was an influential and outspoken player in devising new commodities trading laws passed in late 2000. He also served as chairman of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association from 1988 to 1992 and helped author a prominent Group of Thirty study on derivatives.
Mr. Brickell has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago.
"His broad experience in the global capital and derivatives markets and his understanding of modern risk management tools and strategies make him an excellent choice for this important role," Ms. McHale said.
-By Dawn Kopecki, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-6637; Dawn.Kopecki@dowjones.
Dow Jones Business News
Government Ties Seen Key To Fannie-Freddie Size, Growth
Tuesday February 4, 7:20 pm ET
By John Connor, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Government sponsorship contributes significantly to the size and continuing growth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and their major and expanding roles in securities and derivatives markets, a new study said.ADVERTISEMENT
The study,"Systemic Risk: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Role of OFHEO," was conducted the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, the agency created by Congress in 1992 to oversee the financial safety and soundness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The two mortgage finance giants are government-sponsored enterprises charged with assisting housing. And the new OFHEO study said the perception of implicit federal guarantees arising from their federal ties"encourages market participants to view the enterprises' obligations as almost riskless and makes Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac favored counterparties in the market for OTC (over- the-counter) derivatives."
OFHEO said the two Congressionally-chartered, shareholder-owned firms"are so large that the direct interdependencies between them and other participants in the securities markets may exceed those of any other privately owned financial institutions.
"The magnitude of those interdependencies implies that, if either enterprise became insolvent or illiquid, investors in its debt and, potentially, its derivatives counterparties could incur losses," the study said."Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are themselves vulnerable to conditions in the market for OTC interest rate derivatives."
The report was released on the same day the White House asked OFHEO Director Armando Falcon, a Democrat appointed by President Clinton, for his resignation, according to people familiar with the matter.
The report provides a reminder at the outset of what inspired Congress to create OFHEO in the first place - the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s when some 1,400 thrift institutions became insolvent and were resolved by the federal government at a cost of about $200 billion in 1990 dollars, over 3% of U.S. GDP that year.
The report said the legal benefits conveyed by the federal government save Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac billions of dollars each year. It said, for example, that the exemption from registering their securities with the Securities and Exchange Commission saved the companies over $200 million in 1999, when their combined issuances were very high.
"The most important source of savings, however, is the market's perception that the government implicitly guarantees the enterprises' obligations," the report said.
It said this perception arises from the legal benefits the firms enjoy, their ability to borrow in the federal agency credit market, the volume of their outstanding obligations, and strong Congressional support for their public purposes.
This perception of an implicit federal guarantee"lowers the yields that investors require on debt issued and mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by the enterprises and leads investors and other counterparties to seek less stringent limits on their credit exposures to each enterprise," the report said.
"As a result, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can issue much larger volumes of securities (without obtaining private credit ratings on an issue-by-issue basis), sell a much larger proportion of callable debt than private firms with comparable capital, and avoid the need to post collateral on derivatives transactions," the report continued.
"Further, because of the perception, materially higher risk is unlikely to raise the borrowing costs of either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac to the same extent as it would in the absence of the perception," it said.
"Another economic benefit of government sponsorship is that the enterprises are the only GSEs specifically chartered to support the secondary mortgage market," the report said."The presence of only two such GSEs and the lower operating and funding costs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may limit the competition faced by each enterprise in that market."
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