Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae
The muddle-through approach
Jul 14th 2008
From Economist.com
America’s government tries a quick fix for the intractable problems of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
FANNIE MAE and Freddie Mac, the two government-supported mortgage giants at the centre of America’s housing market, pose a particularly acute problem for the Bush administration. Not only are they too big to fail. They are almost too big to rescue.
They hold or guarantee some $5.2 trillion of the nation’s $12 trillion of mortgages, backed by the thinnest wafer of capital, meaning their collapse would imperil the already paralysed American housing market. Yet as Joshua Rosner, an analyst at Graham Fisher, a research firm, points out, nationalising them, a stark choice for the government since their shares tumbled last week, would “result in a doubling of the federal deficit, a further collapse of the dollar and unthinkable implications for Treasury’s cost of funding in the debt markets.” <![CDATA[<a target="_blank" href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/click%3Bh=v8/36fd/3/0/%2a/h%3B36321810%3B0-0%3B0%3B7053569%3B799-350/300%3B17002217/17020112/1%3B%3B%7Eaopt%3D2/1/a0/0%3B%7Esscs%3D%3fhttp://www.economistsubscriptions.com/ecom517/global"><img src="http://www.elanso.com/U/D/Dcb/cb24f67b76b80cff23616e31c9e93053/128605109397577500.gif" border="0" alt="" /></a>]]>
Those two unpalatable options—failure or rescue—led the Treasury on Sunday July 13th to announce several stopgap measures aimed at restoring confidence in the two institutions, although it fell short of fundamentally reshaping them. The measures may buy a bit of time, but they are unlikely to put to rest highly sensitive questions about the future of Fannie and Freddie, leaving a large cloud looming over global financial markets.
The Treasury’s three-part plan, announced by Hank Paulson, the treasury secretary, is to increase its line of credit to government-sponsored entities (GSEs), which currently stands at a paltry $2.25 billion each. The Treasury also seeks authority to buy stakes in each company if necessary, and wants to give the Federal Reserve a greater role in oversight of the GSEs. Separately, the Fed governors said that they had granted the New York Fed licence to lend to Fannie and Freddie if necessary, against suitable collateral.
Mr Paulson’s announcement, made overnight on the steps of the Treasury just before Asian financial markets opened, gave some support to the dollar, which had wobbled last week as the share prices of Fannie and Freddie halved. As Mr Paulson made clear, part of the problem with the two institutions is that their debt is held by investors around the world. That includes many central banks. The fear is that a sudden collapse of either institution might pose a threat to the dollar and the global economy.
The Paulson plan is aimed at ensuring that both institutions have enough liquidity to conduct their day-to-day businesses of buying mortgages. It came on the eve of a $3 billion debt-auction by Freddie Mac on Monday, which the government will be eager to succeed, to show that the GSEs are still able to raise money in the capital markets. The drying up of liquidity has bought down firms such as Bear Stearns, an American investment bank, and Northern Rock, a British mortgage lender, with devastating speed in the past year. Even though Fannie and Freddie have always been considered, because of their size, to have implicit government support, the Treasury will not have wished to put confidence in that to the test at an auction.
Less clear is the status of shareholders in Fannie and Freddie. The two firms are considered “the odd couple” in American finance because they are owned by shareholders, yet investors have always believed in that implicit government backing. Now that support has become explicit, shareholders must be worried about the price they will have to pay. They may have to provide more capital to Fannie or Freddie, or risk losing their stakes to the government. As double-or-quits bets go, there cannot be many worse than that—not least because a system that provides privatised profits with socialised losses cannot be allowed to persist.
译文:
房地美房利美苟延残喘
美国政府试图短期内解决由房利美和房地美带来的棘手问题
2008年7月14日
选文来自Economist.com
房利美和房地美，是处于美国房市中心由政府所支撑的两大信贷巨擘。他们给布什政府带来了严峻的考验，因为他们不仅尾大不掉，而且都无可救药。
房利美和房地美拥有或担保着全美12万亿贷款当中5.2万亿，只靠微薄的资金支撑。这意味着它们的倒闭将会危及到已经瘫痪的美国房市。然而纽约投资研究公司（Gramham Fisher)的一名分析师乔希·罗斯纳（Joshua Rosner）表示，把房利美和房地美国有化对于政府来说是个下策，因为两家股票上周震荡走低，而国有化将“导致联邦赤字的翻倍，美元进一步疲软，还有给财政部为信贷市场提供资金借贷的成本带来不可估量的后果。”
是倒闭还是拯救？这两难的选择，促使财政部在7月13日周日宣布了几个临时措施，旨在恢复市场对两家机构的信心，但它们仍不足以从根本上扭转态势。这些措施也许能换来一些时间，但未必会平息关于房利美和房地美前景的高度敏感问题，而会让全球金融市场处于迷雾当中。
这个由财政部大臣汉克·保尔森（Hank Paulson)宣布的计划分为三部分，意在增加GSE（政府支持企业）信用贷款的最高限额。现在每个GSE的价值只有区区22.5亿美元。财政部也寻求权威机构来在必要时买入两家公司的股份，并期望美联储在监管GSE方面发挥更大作用。另外，美联储高层表示它们已经给纽约联储许可，必要时可以借款给房利美及房地美，并适当兑换抵押。
保尔森是在亚洲金融市场开市前天晚上，于财政部大楼阶梯上宣布措施的。措施的宣布给予了美元部分支持，而上周房利美和房地美股价减半的时候，美元还在持续震荡。保尔森明确指出，两家机构的问题部分在于它们的贷款是由全球各地的投资者所持有，包括了很多国家中央银行。他担心其中任何一家机构的倒闭都将威胁到美元价值和全球经济。
保尔森的措施目标是确保两家机构拥有足够的流动性来进行买入贷款的日常营业。措施的宣布迎来了周一房地美一宗30亿美元的债权拍卖。政府热切希望这宗买卖能够成功，以表明GSE仍有能力在金融市场上盈利。去年，流动性的干枯让好些公司以惊人的速度倒闭了，例如美国一家投资银行贝尔斯登（Bear Stearns），还有英国借贷机构北岩银行（Northern Rock）。即使人们一直认为房利美和房地美，出于它们的规模，都会有政府的间接支撑。然而财政部对此信心不大，更不想拿一个拍卖来做试验。
更不明朗的是房利美和房地美的股东地位。两家公司被认为是美国金融市场的“古怪拍档”，因为它们都是由股东所拥有，但投资者长期认为它们有政府间接资助。既然这种资助已公诸于世，股东就要考虑他们将付出的代价。他们要不给房地美房利美提供更多的资金，要不任由政府抽走它们的股份。这是一个双赢或双输的博弈，没有什么更糟糕了—— 一定程度上是因为一个提供私人利润的机构竟带来了社会损失，这是让人不能容忍的。