Thursday, August 11, 2011

Fannie Mae is purchasing Bank of America bad assets

Since taxpayers (you and me) own Fannie Mae it means that we are purchasing bad assets that will end up costing us more money.
But apparently the federal government is determined to resurrect BofA: the Wall Street Journal reports the feds have just used Fannie Mae, which is controlled by the U.S. government, to infuse BofA with $500 million and ease one of the bank's biggest headaches.
Yesterday afternoon on CNBC, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan mentioned that five of BofA's six businesses were making money. The one black spot was its massive portfolio of problematic mortgages and the liabilities flowing from it. Moynihan also mentioned that BofA had just sold some "mortgage servicing rights" as part of its balance sheet strengthening efforts, but he didn't elaborate.
According to the WSJ, Fannie Mae spent $500 million to buy the servicing rights to a big chunk of the "seven million loans still causing the most problems." Although the $500 million is a paper loss to BofA, in that the rights were "originally worth more," it looks like BofA is still getting a good deal because the portfolio's "value is expected to deteriorate further."
How bad are the loans?
But the loans Fannie Mae now has to deal with are even worse than 13% delinquency rate suggests. According to the WSJ, "more than half of the loans are in troubled U.S. real-estate markets." This likely means markets where a high percentage of the houses are underwater and there's a huge oversupply, driving prices down further and making defaults more likely.
Fannie Mae is purchasing "the servicing rights in order to transfer the day-to-day management of those loans to a different company." That's another huge sign that Fannie Mae is overpaying. If the rights were really worth $500 million, wouldn't a private company pay that for them? Instead, it sounds like Fannie Mae is doing a bailout two-step, one to BofA and one to whomever takes these rights off Fannie Mae's hands.
Read it all

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