Regulator hints he’ll withhold a dividend payout to keep mortgage companies’ finances healthy if he has to
By Andrea Riquier | MarketWatch
Fannie Mae’s current headquarters on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington D.C. The agency plans to vacate this building by 2018.
In 2008, as the financial crisis swirled, the federal government rushed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship. The two giant mortgage-finance companies became wards of the state under a new regulator that would manage their affairs until they were healthy enough to stand on their own.
Nearly nine years later, they’re still under government control. And while in some ways their crisis has receded, in other—and what some would call self-inflicted—ways, Fannie FNMA, +1.87% and Freddie FMCC, +1.55% still teeter on the edge of needing another taxpayer bailout.
Related: Fed’s Rosengren warns that Fannie, Freddie reform could roil commercial real-estate market
