Fannie Mae Profit Signals a Stabilizing Housing Market

Fannie Mae, the huge housing finance company, says that for the second straight quarter it did not need more federal bailout money for that period.WASHINGTON — Buoyed by rising home prices, Fannie Mae reported a second-quarter profit of $5.1 billion and said that for the second straight quarter it did not need more federal bailout money for that period.

I was sympathetic to John McCain's plan to eliminate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but Annie Lowrey made a pretty compelling case that it was a terrible idea. But it was a terrible idea for a weird reason: It got rid of a bad idea too fast.

(Reuters) - The Treasury Department may announce on Monday that taxpayers have made a $25 billion profit on mortgage bonds purchased at the height of the meltdown, the Wall Street Journal reported. Treasury had spent about $225 billion on purchases of mortgage debt over 16 months before it began selling the securities last year, the Journal said. The government last week sold the last of the bonds, liquidating the Treasury's ownership of debt backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac , the newspaper said. ...

US mortgage group Fannie Mae, which after the financial crisis received a government bailout, will pay $59.4 billion in pay outs to the US Treasury. The move brought expectations that taxpayers will be actually able to receive dividends from their loan.