Fannie, Freddie and the Money Post-"Modelling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – Part VI" (FNM, FRE)

As Mr. Hempton puts it:

This is the money post. I put Parts I, II, III, IV and V together to come to the surprising conclusion that both Fannie and Freddie survive. This conclusion is highly-non-consensus and has substantial political and investment implications. Also I would like to thank FTAlphaville for linking to this series – most the rest of the blogosphere has been silent possibly because I disagree with their preconceptions/ideology. The comments on FTAlphaville reflect mainstream finance opinion – that Fannie and Freddie are irredeemably insolvent.

Putting the model together

We now have enough to do some basic modelling of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I will do it for Freddie Mac only – and leave it to the more ambitious readers to do it for Fannie Mae.*

In the second post in this series I demonstrated how the losses that have been booked to date (rather than provisioned to date) have come primarily from outside the traditional guarantee book of business. Those losses are primarily mark-to-market losses on mortgage securities (especially subprime securities), mark to market losses on the hedge book and the write-off of tax assets.

None of those loss categories are going to expand – and indeed some will reverse.

In the fourth post I estimated the losses in the traditional guarantee book of business. I have asserted that the model is fairly robust (and will cover that in the next three posts) however I showed under quite reasonable assumption that there were $37.6 billion in losses to be realised at Freddie Mac at year end 2008. Since then $2.9 billion have been realised so there are $34.7 billion left to come.

Of these losses 25.2 billion have already been provided for. From now until when the problem-years of business loans run off Freddie will only need to take another 12.5 billion in provisions. They may elect to take more than $12.5 billion in provisions – but if they do and my models are reasonable – then in all likelihood the excess provisions will be reversed through the income statement.

Now if you go to the last Freddie Mac results you will see they have a positive net worth of $8.2 billion. However they owe the government $51.7 billion, as the government has injected $51.7 billion in senior preferred securities. They are thus $43.5 billion in the hole....MORE at Bronte Capital.