The markets seem to think so…..From Doug Noland at Prudent Bear:
Now Fannie is in theory a good credit, but its implicit Federal guarantee has never been tested. Market observers may be worried that many of the “rescue the homeowner” proposals, starting with what Tanta calls “Loans Formerly Known as Jumbos” now eligible for the GSE, rely on the government backing mortgage debt that formerly was left to its own devices, generally for good reasons.
This isn’t a free lunch, even though a lot of observers seem to think it is. Recall these comments from Jim Hamilton at the Fed’s Jackson Hole conference:
Since 1990, U.S. nominal GDP has increased about 80% (logarithmically). Outstanding mortgage debt grew 50% more than this, raising the debt/GDP ratio from about 0.5 to 0.8. Mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie grew 75% faster than GDP, while mortgages held outright by the two GSEs increased 150% more than GDP. The share of all mortgages held outright by Fannie and Freddie grew from 4.7% in 1990 to 12.9% in 2006, which includes $170 billion in subprime AAA-rated private label securities. The fraction had been as high as 20.5% in 2002.3. It is hard to escape the inference that expansion of the role of the GSEs may have had something to do with the expansion of mortgage debt.
This acquisition of mortgages was enabled by issuance of debt by the GSEs which currently amounts to about $1.5 trillion. Investors were willing to lend this money to Fannie and Freddie at terms more favorable than are available to other private companies, despite the fact that the net equity of the enterprises– about $70 billion last year– represents only 5% of their debt and only 1.5% of their combined debt plus mortgage guarantees. If I knew why investors were so willing to lend to the GSEs at such favorable terms, I think we’d have at least part of the answer to the puzzle.
And I think the obvious answer is that investors were happy to lend to the GSEs because they thought that, despite the absence of explicit government guarantees, in practice the government would never allow them to default. And which part of the government is supposed to ensure this, exactly? The Federal Reserve comes to mind. I’m thinking that there exists a time path for short term interest rates that would guarantee a degree of real estate inflation such that the GSEs would not default. The creditors may have reasoned, “the Fed would never allow aggregate conditions to come to a point where Fannie or Freddie actually default.” And the Fed says, “oh yes we would.” And the market says, “oh no you wouldn’t.”
It’s a game of chicken. And one thing that’s very clear to me is that this is not a game that the Fed wants to play, because the risk-takers are holding the ace card, which is the fact that, truth be told, the Fed does not want to see the GSEs default. None of us do. That would be an event with significant macroeconomic externalities that the Fed is very much committed to avoid.
While I think that preserving the solvency of the GSEs is a legitimate goal for policy, it is equally clear to me that the correct instrument with which to achieve this goal is not the manipulation of short-term interest rates, but instead stronger regulatory supervision of the type sought by OFHEO Director James Lockhart, specifically, controlling the rate of growth of the GSEs’ assets and liabilities, and making sure the net equity is sufficient to ensure that it’s the owners, and not the rest of us, who are absorbing any risks. So here’s my key recommendation– any insitution that is deemed to be “too big to fail” should be subject to capital controls that assure an adequate net equity cushion.
Not only is Hamilton’s recommendation being ignored, it’s being turned on its head.
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James Lockhart seems to have a clue, but it also seems like The Paulson’s of The World don’t care about The Lockhart’s.