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...Freddie's portfolio of [mortgage] insurance is more risky than the market was led to believe," says Paul Miller, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets. Sister company Fannie Mae lost even more last year, with $58.7 billion of red ink. But Fannie was better capitalized than Freddie going into the credit crunch. So even though Freddie by many measures is smaller than Fannie, the problems at Freddie will probably end up costing more...
Freddie's business, which in part comes from a government mandate, is insuring mortgages. So when borrowers lose their jobs, as many now are, Freddie is going to lose money. But only a quarter of Freddie's red ink, or about $13 billion, comes from mortgage-insurance woes. The firm took a larger hit from its investment in mortgage-backed securities tied to subprime, adjustable-rate or jumbo mortgages. By law, Freddie isn't allowed to insure against losses on those types of mortgages, in part because they are riskier. But it bought securities tied to those home loans anyway...
...reason is an obscure accounting rule that is the subject of intense lobbying by representatives of the banking industry ahead of congressional hearings on Thursday on the matter. A change to that rule could drain some of the banks' red ink and possibly make it easier for them to off-load the toxic assets. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis...
...Obie, was asked what the most outrageous use of investor money he's come across has been, his list was appropriately wacky. "The craziest things we've found recently," Obie said, "are a bust of Julius Caesar, an extensive garden-gnome collection, a $300,000 Mickey Mouse drawing, bejeweled ink pens, several of which cost more than $100,000, $4 million worth of custom tailored clothes, a silver set allegedly belonging to Paul Revere, and two purple Jaguars with hand-painted leopard-skin roofs." It should be added that Ruth Madoff once gave her husband a $14,000 cigar humidor...
...surviving Post faces major financial problems of its own. And Scripps, long known for its bottom-line thinking, claimed it lost $15 million in Denver last year. Having had its fill of this ink-on-paper version of High Noon, it threw down its guns first - just as it had done in Albuquerque, N.M.; Birmingham, Ala.; and, ironically, Cincinnati...