High court takes on Fannie, Freddie presidential power case

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

High court takes on Fannie, Freddie presidential power case

By JESSICA GRESKO
December 9, 2020

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court wrestled Wednesday with a case that could make it easier for the president to fire the head of the agency that oversees government-controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

But the justices seemed skeptical about doing what shareholders of the companies have asked: setting aside an agreement under which the companies have paid the government more than $245 billion. That money was compensation for the taxpayer bailout Fannie and Freddie received after the 2007 housing market crash.

Justice Neil Gorsuch called the shareholders’ ask “a big one” and “hard for us to swallow.”

The case before the justices involves the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie and Freddie and was created following the housing market crash. One of the questions for the court, which has been hearing arguments by phone because of the coronavirus pandemic, is whether the agency’s structure violates the Constitution.

The case is in many ways similar to one the justices decided earlier this year involving the FHFA’s companion agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB, the government’s consumer watchdog agency, was created by Congress in response to the same financial crisis.

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/politics-us-supreme-court-coronavirus-pandemic-financial-markets-courts-c460ad554dfb62ee2275a1e27fd22d5f

[soothsayer]

1. Indentured servitude at the corporate level

Fannie and Freddie are not allowed to pay back the government “loans” forced on them.

I actually wouldn’t have minded if the govt took a stake in the companies it bailed out — even those bailed out with pandemic funds — but they’d need to do it fairly and not the way they screwed Fannie and Freddie and their shareholders.