{"id":13862,"date":"2012-04-21T11:42:16","date_gmt":"2012-04-21T15:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=13862"},"modified":"2012-04-21T16:51:09","modified_gmt":"2012-04-21T20:51:09","slug":"bunkum-from-obama-and-geithner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/13862\/bunkum-from-obama-and-geithner\/","title":{"rendered":"Bunkum from Obama and Geithner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>U.S. Treasury Secretary and Tax Cheat Tim Geithner and his minions at Treasury, trying to make the Bush-Obama TARP (and other financial-sector) bailouts look good, are cooking the books in a flagrant manner. That is the upshot of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2012-04-19\/hope-for-treasury-bailout-profits-rests-on-fuzzy-math.html\" target=\"_blank\">this superb bit of reporting and analysis<\/a> from the incomparable Jonathan Weil of Bloomberg News. Well worth reading. A sample:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;\">On top of that, there\u2019s the current net cost of the government-sponsored housing financiers <\/span><a style=\"border-image: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; color: #0066cc; text-decoration: none; font-family: Arial; line-height: 24px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\" title=\"Open Web Site\" rel=\"external\" href=\"http:\/\/www.fhfa.gov\/webfiles\/23879\/Conservator'sReport4Q201141212F.pdf\">Fannie Mae<\/a><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;\"> and <\/span><a style=\"border-image: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; color: #0066cc; text-decoration: none; font-family: Arial; line-height: 24px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\" title=\"Open Web Site\" rel=\"external\" href=\"http:\/\/www.fhfa.gov\/webfiles\/22737\/GSEProjF.pdf\">Freddie Mac<\/a><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;\">, which the Treasury pegged at $151 billion. &#8230;<\/span>[T]he report included a White House budget <\/span><a style=\"border-image: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; color: #0066cc; text-decoration: none; font-family: Arial; line-height: 24px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\" title=\"Open Web Site\" rel=\"external\" href=\"http:\/\/www.treasury.gov\/resource-center\/data-chart-center\/Documents\/20120413_FinancialCrisisResponse.pdf\">projection<\/a><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;\"> showing the net cost of the Fannie and Freddie conservatorships would fall 81 percent to $28 billion by fiscal 2022. Put another way, the projection envisions record profits at the two companies for years to come&#8230;.<span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;\">As for the declining Fannie and Freddie cost projections, the Treasury is relying on a forecast that in essence has the two companies generating $123 billion of earnings over the next 10 years. This would be nice, except there\u2019s no basis for believing it will happen. The companies have reported <\/span><a style=\"border-image: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; color: #0066cc; text-decoration: none; font-family: Arial; line-height: 24px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\" title=\"Get Quote\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/quote\/FNMA:US\">losses<\/a><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;\"> every year since 2007. During the previous 10-year period from 1997 to 2006, which included the housing boom, their combined <\/span><a style=\"border-image: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; color: #0066cc; text-decoration: none; font-family: Arial; line-height: 24px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px initial initial;\" title=\"Get Quote\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/quote\/FMCC:US\">earnings<\/a><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;\"> were only $82 billion&#8230;.<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;\">This isn&#8217;t fuzzy accounting; it&#8217;s deeply dishonest accounting. Weil should not be the only journalist reporting it.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>U.S. Treasury Secretary and Tax Cheat Tim Geithner and his minions at Treasury, trying to make the Bush-Obama TARP (and other financial-sector) bailouts look good, are cooking the books in a flagrant manner. That is the upshot of this superb bit of reporting and analysis from the incomparable Jonathan Weil of Bloomberg News. Well worth [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[543,3491,183,3492],"class_list":["post-13862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-geithner","tag-jonathan-weil","tag-tarp","tag-treasury"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13862"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13864,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13862\/revisions\/13864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}