You guys know that if I post something in the PeeG over the weekend, especially on a day when my Giants roll up the most points (44-6) and yardage (525 yards) they ever have since the days of Ally Sherman (which I don’t even have the pleasure of remembering, btw), it’s gotta be regarding a topic of relative importance.

You know that goes double when the topic involves a positive recommendation of a New York Times article. I have to give these guys credit, however, as this is a fairly balanced article, and it lays blame exactly where it should go — at the feet of the clusterfucked “private-governmental entity” itself and it’s many masters whom it tried, but ultimately failed to serve. Maybe Pinch Sulzberger was weekending in Nice this weekend?

In any event, if you fuckers read one article about this meltdown, it should be this one. If your ADD is acting up, take an extra dose of Ritalin. The additional expense will be well worth it.

Pressured to Take More Risk, Fannie Reached the Tipping Point

Some excerpts:

“Everybody understood that we were now buying loans that we would have previously rejected, and that the models were telling us that we were charging way too little,” said a former senior Fannie executive. “But our mandate was to stay relevant and to serve low-income borrowers. So that’s what we did.”

Between 2005 and 2007, the company’s acquisitions of mortgages with down payments of less than 10 percent almost tripled. As the market for risky loans soared to $1 trillion, Fannie expanded in white-hot real estate areas like California and Florida.

For two years, Mr. Mudd operated without a permanent chief risk officer to guard against unhealthy hazards. When Enrico Dallavecchia was hired for that position in 2006, he told Mr. Mudd that the company should be charging more to handle risky loans.

In the following months to come, Mr. Dallavecchia warned that some markets were becoming overheated and argued that a housing bubble had formed, according to a person with knowledge of the conversations. But many of the warnings were rebuffed.

Mr. Mudd told Mr. Dallavecchia that the market, shareholders and Congress all thought the companies should be taking more risks, not fewer, according to a person who observed the conversation. “Who am I supposed to fight with first?” Mr. Mudd asked.

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Had Fannie been a private entity, its comeuppance might have happened a year ago. But the White House, Wall Street and Capitol Hill were more concerned about the trillions of dollars in other loans that were poisoning financial institutions and banks.

Lawmakers, particularly Democrats, leaned on Fannie and Freddie to buy and hold those troubled debts, hoping that removing them from the system would help the economy recover. The companies, eager to regain market share and buy what they thought were undervalued loans, rushed to comply.

The White House also pitched in. James B. Lockhart, the chief regulator of Fannie and Freddie, adjusted the companies’ lending standards so they could purchase as much as $40 billion in new subprime loans. Some in Congress praised the move.

“I’m not worried about Fannie and Freddie’s health, I’m worried that they won’t do enough to help out the economy,” the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, said at the time. “That’s why I’ve supported them all these years — so that they can help at a time like this.”

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Fly’s buddy — “King Steel” of recent Wachovia infamy, is featured in this article as well. This clown is like the Zelig of fucked up financial entities! Excerpt:

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But earlier this year, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. grew concerned about Fannie’s and Freddie’s stability. He sent a deputy, Robert K. Steel, a former colleague from his time at Goldman Sachs, to speak with Mr. Mudd and his counterpart at Freddie.

Mr. Steel’s orders, according to several people, were to get commitments from the companies to raise more money as a cushion against all the new loans. But when he met with the firms, Mr. Steel made few demands and seemed unfamiliar with Fannie’s and Freddie’s operations, according to someone who attended the discussions.

Rather than getting firm commitments, Mr. Steel struck handshake deals without deadlines.

That misstep would become obvious over the coming months. Although Fannie raised $7.4 billion, Freddie never raised any additional money.

Mr. Steel, who left the Treasury Department over the summer to head Wachovia bank, disputed that he had failed in his handling of the companies, and said he was proud of his work .

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Like he’s proud of his recent work with one of the oldest banking institutions in the Southeast, no doubt? We’re screwed, folks!

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