And the below differs from Enron's "we control it but we don't technically own it so its debt isn't our debt" games, the ones proving how corrupt capitalism is, exactly how?
Guaranteed to Fail: Fannie, Freddie, and the Debacle of Mortgage Finance (long PDF)
...By far, the most important legislation affecting Fannie Mae was its conversion into a private company in 1968. It was primarily for accounting purposes. The Johnson administration wanted Fannie Mae privatized, so as to remove its debt from the federal government's books, thereby reducing the size of the national debt. In addition, a change in federal budgeting procedures at the time would have counted Fannie Mae's net purchases of mortgages as current government expenditures, which would have meant that those net purchases would have added to recorded federal budget deficits—something that any presidential administration would want to avoid doing during its own term.
The privatization meant that Fannie Mae was spun off to the private sector and became a publicly traded company, with its shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). However, Fannie Mae retained its federal charter and the special status and privileges that went with the charter. Fannie Mae also had its own special regulator: the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which had been created as a cabinet-level department in 1965 and retained some regulatory powers over Fannie Mae. Another prominent indicator of the specialness of Fannie Mae, despite its apparent structure as just another private (publicly traded) company, was the power of the President of the United States to appoint five board members to the Fannie Mae board of directors. No other company that was listed on the NYSE had presidential appointees on its board....
Godzilla Hedge Fund Fannie Mae Was ‘Guaranteed to Fail’: Books
For Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the figure to remember is 79.9 -- the percent ownership that the U.S. Treasury took in each when it seized control in 2008. If the stakes were 80 percent, the mortgage companies would land on the federal budget, as we’re reminded in “Guaranteed to Fail,” a valuable book on how two quasi-public companies became “the world’s largest and most leveraged hedge funds.”
Kiss all the political posturing about the U.S. public debt ceiling goodbye: With Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s debts tacked on, the total would lurch to $15.84 trillion, well over the current limit of $14.29 trillion, the authors say....
