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Cloudy Future for Fannie and Freddie
...Treasury officials say more details may be forthcoming, although they decline to say when. To many experts, however, the message is that Fannie and Freddie are likely to remain wards of the state for years.

And, given the alarm in some quarters over the mounting budget deficit, these two giants and their vast obligations are likely to remain conveniently — and controversially — off the federal books. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have obligations of $3.9 trillion to investors who bought bundles of mortgages that the companies assembled. ...

...Republicans are trying to emphasize the companies’ longtime Democratic ties. They attacked the Treasury Department in December when the government announced multimillion-dollar pay packages for the companies’ top executives.

“Awarding millions of dollars in bonuses on the taxpayers’ dime is unconscionable,” Representative Jeb Hensarling, Republican of Texas, wrote to the Treasury secretary in a letter signed by 70 Republicans. ...

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Rising FHA default rate foreshadows a crush of foreclosures
...Although the FHA's default rate has been climbing for months and eating into the agency's cash, the latest figures show that the FHA's woes are getting worse even as the housing market shows signs of improvement. The problems are rooted in FHA mortgages made in 2007 and 2008. Those loans are now maturing into their worst years because failures most often occur two to three years after a mortgage is made.

If the trend continues and the FHA's cash reserves are exhausted, the federal government would automatically use taxpayer money to cover the losses -- a first for the agency, which has always used the fees it charges borrowers to pay for its losses. ...