The Federal Reserve has not had any discussions with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac about access to direct loans from the central bank, Fed spokeswoman Michelle Smith said.
``Federal Reserve officials are following the situation closely,'' Smith said in a telephone interview today. ``However, there have been no discussions'' with the companies ``about access to the discount window,'' she said....MORE
Oh well, there's another use for this bad boy,
Snooping on the Rich via Helicopter
A couple of years ago, Forbes magazine came out with a list of top billionaire homes.
What was remarkable was the aerial photos of mansions owned by super-private billionaires such as Bill Gates, Michael Dell, George Lucas and Abigail Johnson of Fidelity. Many appear to have been shot from a helicopter or plane — making the lack of cooperation from the owners meaningless.
Vanity Fair followed up in July 2006 with an article about hedge-funder wealth in Greenwich, Conn. To illustrated Nina Munk’s highly entertaining story, the magazine ran crystal-clear photos of homes owned by Steven Cohen, Paul Tudor Jones II and others. The photo of the Cohens’ home was especially awe-inspiring, showing 32,000 square feet of house with various outbuildings, a tennis court, English gardens, ice rink and a little gabled house for the Zamboni. It also showed several cars in the driveway, with two people standing near the front entrance.
This month, Vanity Fair re-enters the air war with photos of several mansions in the Hamptons. The article, about the local real-estate market, features a shot of a home bought by hedge-fund billionaire John Paulson. The article also has a photo of Steve Schwarzman’s monster compound, still under construction. (You can even see the vans and construction workers.)...MORE from the WSJ's Wealth Report blog.
