July 23, 2008 10:59AM

The $25 Billion Lie: The GSE Bailout Will Cost You Hundreds of Billions

By Cody Willard

Enough with the lies, already. The lies! Aurgh.

I mean, do you really, even for one second, believe that the losses on Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s $5 trillion portfolio that consists mostly of the highest risk mortgages (their very charter is to facilitate flow of such mortgages) — do you really believe that the total losses on that portfolio in the next couple years is going to be $25 billion?

$5 trillion in mortgages. $25 billion in losses. Dude, Citigroup wrote down $18 billion IN ONE QUARTER. $25 billion is what the government, WITHOUT ANY VERIFICATION of how they got those numbers except that they spoke to a bunch of people who might or might not have a clue, is what the government says will be the most likely loss that you and I will have to pay for. Yup, the socialist Republicans and Democrats in power and their Illuminati conspiracy have got the mainstream media bothering to report that $25 billion lie of an estimate as if it’s relevant to reality. And boy, has the MSM ever bought into it:

Cost of Loan Bailout, if Needed, Could Be $25 Billion
New York Times, United States - 15 hours ago
Most immediately, the $25 billion cost estimate provides a precise amount that Congress will have to offset with spending cuts or tax increases if lawmakers …
Fannie, Freddie Rescue May Cost $25 Billion, CBO Says (Update3) Bloomberg
Fannie, Freddie Bailout May Cost Up To $25 Billion CBS News
NPR - Bloomberg
all 2,555 news articles »

FNM - FRE

Don’t be a sucker. The losses that we taxpayers will be hit with on this bail out are going to be much more than the 0.06% of the value of the $5 trillion we’re talking about that FRE and FNM have on their books. It’s going to cost you hundreds of billions and perhaps trillions.

Seriously, don’t be a sucker. They are lying to you.

PS. Did you know that there is not a single definition for the word “gullible” anywhere on the Internet. Go ahead and Google it. Check.

19 Responses to “The $25 Billion Lie: The GSE Bailout Will Cost You Hundreds of Billions”

Comment by Karen

July 23rd, 2008 at 11:54 am

Check Dictionary.com…. gullible - easily deceived or cheated.

However, I agree with you. I wrote my senators. Did they listen????
Comment by Jeff Godes

July 23rd, 2008 at 12:47 pm

We are in for a decade of having to face up to ever-growing financial problems in America. These kinds of bail-outs will be addressed soon, followed by the issue of consumer debt and the burden of credit card interest.
Comment by Stephanie

July 23rd, 2008 at 1:47 pm

Check out Karl Denniger’s TickerForum. They are really working hard to fight the passgae of this bill….they need as many voices as possible. You seem to understand the problems with this bail out. Glad to see you are feeling better..
Comment by roy

July 23rd, 2008 at 2:01 pm

wish this sort of honesty would bleed through to the MSM or even the Yahoo “Finance” page, soon to be known as the Daily Globe of the financial world

right on brother
Comment by David

July 23rd, 2008 at 2:03 pm

I think the majority of our society has become…gullible. Just like all the other “entitlement programs” our government hands out, this is the last program to BUY VOTES so the incumbents remain incumbents. VOTE THEM ALL OUT!! We need some non-career politicans who will give the government back to the people.

When people fear the government you have slavery, when the government fears the people you have freedom. I’m not sure who said that but they were right.
Comment by Robert

July 23rd, 2008 at 2:27 pm

another site is http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict

3 definitions of which my favorite…easily tricked because of being too trusting; This whole thing is exactly what this country needs to wake them up and realize that WE the People are no longer running this country! It’s run by a select group of charlatans and crooks who realize that politics is the best scam around! WAKE UP AMERICA
Comment by Oliver Hanso

July 23rd, 2008 at 2:36 pm

Instead of saying Illuminati, you might as well call out the Rothschild, they are the real problem. Is that how you got sick, they tried to take you out just like they just did with Ron Paul.
Comment by joe taylor

July 23rd, 2008 at 3:22 pm

Cody, glad you are back. Miracle. Man can you believe Miss Universe? I mean come on. Tell Gogo our prices of gasoline fell 6 cents over the last 4 days.
Comment by Holten

July 23rd, 2008 at 8:30 pm

Ramone my gardener, who makes $7/hour, was able to secure a no money down, no income verification $ Million mortgage for a McMansion down the street. Rising home equity scored a $100,000 Mercedes car loan. With all the new credit cards, working became optional – to fend off boredom, he spent his days on the couch ringing up $200K of credit card charges at QVC and Home Shopping Network.

Tragically, Ramone might have to give back car/house keys, jeopardizing his shot at the American dream of home ownership, including his promised big home equity profit.

Fortunately for Ramone, taxpayers are generously going to work out more affordable mortgage terms so he can keep his house, and also dismiss much of his other debt.

Ramone is clearly a victim of over zealous savers ( worst of all the Chinese ) who’s profligate savings rate enabled inappropriate credit. Since they caused this mess, savers should fairly bear the lion’s share of bailout costs. And future over-achiever hyper-saver types will enable another credit crisis down the road, so they should share the penalty.

Helping Ramone and his lenders is a smart investment in your own home value - if his beautiful house is well manicured, with an expensive car in the driveway, won’t that make your own dumpy saver’s fixer-upper much more valuable ? Best of all, having achieved the American dream, Ramone (and his lenders) are much less likely to rob you at gunpoint – your neighborhood will be safer, translating to higher property values. And if Ramone’s house keeps rising in value, he’ll be able to borrow/spend even more – which keeps people employed – need a job? Maybe you can do some gardening for him.

Ramone is just too big to fail – but saver’s absolutely deserve what’s coming to them.

The moral is that this crisis could’ve been easily avoided if savers had acted responsibly - by saving less and spending more.
Comment by Andrew

July 23rd, 2008 at 11:10 pm

GoGo believes that government is there to take care of us by handing out scraps and socialistic policies for the “greater good”. She was all excited about the hand out of the housing bill. Like we need the government to tell us how we should be living. This is a country based on Liberty not scraps from elitists. She apparently also believes in class war where corporations are here to take advantage of people and the government is on the side of the little people. Someone needs to explain to her that this is the way to enslavement and Communistic rule. When a politician gradually takes over a country it is done on good deeds of helping the little guy and villianizing people who have worked hard and taken risks and had a vision for a better product or service that other people have benefited from by request. If these people have truly ripped off their customers, they should be put in jail, not made a political scapegoat to help unethical politicians attain power by pitting one group against another. She has bought into this and it is very dangerous. Her opinions come from ignorance or denial. How is it right that the government confiscates money or inflates the economy to correct their or the masters of pull’s mistakes.
Comment by jag

July 24th, 2008 at 12:56 am

In these troubled times, we are all worried to find a solution to the financial and energy crisis, into which we have been pushed. Our house values are going down; interest on credits is going up. We as American have to find ways to go around the financial crisis that we are in. Before we had no solution, as we had no effective tools to incr4ase our house value. By adding income value to ones real estate, one can earn decent raise in his house value. The use of ones property as a lodging, as a ware house, a gallery or as a plug-in-station can enhance the value of ones house value. Besides the income that these small businesses generate can be very helpful to reduce debt burden, improve the standard of living. Of course there are franchise offering companies, contracts with them can shoot up the house value, but is at a very high cost beyond the reach of most of the people. Now HouseDNA.com is the first company to provide instant infrastructure and tools that allows one to start a lodging, storefront, gallery and even new services called plug-in electric station. One can open a business platform within few minutes, and housedna.com provides the tools that automatically keep track of rooms & goods availability, move orders, transactions, confirmations and even refunds. The platform empowers to solve the crisis by ourselves. it is extremely affordable, free from bureaucracy, difficult government policies, and it is friendly. Anyone is welcome to try and see if this works for him or not. If it works, then only then houseDNA.com will make charge a transaction fee from the user, for every successful transaction. HouseDNA.com is designed to allow everyone in US to list and open a business platform (business homepage).
Comment by Ryan Daniel

July 24th, 2008 at 1:59 am

You are so right about this Cody. The same thought crossed my mind.

Well, with a multibillion dollar loan bailout, baby boomers retiring and a social security bomb about to explode, that ought to do it for America.

Perhaps the Middle East could float our nation one giant adjustable rate mortgage. But then we would have to lie about our income and debt status on the app.
Comment by Mark

July 24th, 2008 at 3:48 am

Gullible (adj): Describing anyone who thinks Mr. Willard actually believes there is no definition of gullible on the internet and sets out to prove otherwise. Cody is messing with us. Get the joke now?
Comment by Holten, NYC

July 24th, 2008 at 10:49 am

Over zealous, profligate saving (especially by Asian countries ) leading to easy credit, clearly contributed to the mortgage crisis. Even worse, savers completely misunderstood that in the new economy, saving is actually a totally obsolete concept - why save money - when you can just print more of it?
Comment by Geoff

July 24th, 2008 at 1:33 pm

This is not a problem that just cropped up in the last 2 years.. The Congressmen who sit on the oversight committee have represented to us by their very presence that they are qualified to regulate and enforce laws regarding the safety of such agencies and GSE’s.. These people should be replaced on the committees and then dismissed from office.. It’s all been a big free-for-all for years, and no one said a thing about it …
Comment by Radarnav

July 24th, 2008 at 2:12 pm

We elected these Bozos!! They pressured the lending businesses to lend money to people who clearly could not afford a home. Now, they declare a crisis and pass the bill onto “Joe Average” taxpayer. All the while they are doing everything to drive up the costs of everything in this economy due to their idiotic position on more drilling.

Glad I am retiring. All tax free - for now.

Maybe every American below the age of 55 ought to think who is going to pay for all the Democrat Good Deals as all of us Baby Boomers retire. There aren’t enough taxpayers to pay for all these FreeLoaders (Legal & Illegal) and the Entitlements from the Democrats.
Comment by Larry Bellinger

July 26th, 2008 at 4:23 am

Why is it all these ‘free market” politicians are suddenly talking “bailout this”" and “bailout that?” Back in 1976, Franklin National Bank, at the time the 5th largest bank in the country, got infiltrated by a smart Mafia guy, and found it had engaged in a measly $26 million (NOT billion) in illegal foreign trading. It brought down the bank, and not one politician said one word about bailout.

Once again, why? Can you say “lobbyist money?”

I think it’s time to put everyone in the Senate and the House of Representatives in jail for malfeasance in office for the way they have mishandled the economy, building up a $9 trillion deficit and $50 trillion in unfunded mandates. Yet they continue to hammer spending more while cutting taxes. Their vision fixes things for the next 5 minutes, giving no thought to what’s going to result from their actions in a year, 5 years, 20 years.

It’s bizarre. Those of you who were adults 20 years ago, stop and think for a moment… how does it feel to know we are running 2 wars by borrowing the money from the Chinese Communists, not exactly our best friends in the world? You want to see a crisis on Wall Street? Let the Chinese decide, for political reasons, or because they’re tired of the dollar’s collapsing value, to stop buying our debt.

Can you say “depression?”

We’ve already become a third world country in the quality of our health care (30th in the world). You stand a better chance of surviving a medical procedure in Costa Rica than in the United States, and it’s a LOT cheaper. We’re on the edge of becoming a third world country economically.

God bless America, indeed. We’re going to need it.
Comment by pj

July 28th, 2008 at 4:29 pm

First time reading this blog, first time at FBN website. Now punching self in head for googling “gullible”. No more reading today - must go buy more energy stocks and prepare for internet clean-out day by disconnecting equipment from the outlet so it doesn’t get dust blown into it.
Comment by Socialist States of America: What Country Did I Wake Up in Today? at The Cody Word

September 8th, 2008 at 11:15 am

[...] As I wrote from the first light of this bail out, it won’t cost us $25 billion as the Treasury pretended it would to get the rights to [...]