Contrary to what you may have read, it appears that strategic defaults may actually be declining. Today Nick Timiraos of the Wall Street Journal wrote an interesting piece about strategic defaults that suggests that almost one in five mortgage defaults through the first six months of 2009 were of th…

Yesterday Fannie Mae announced a new set of policies designed to deal with strategic defaulters – those who have the means to pay their mortgage but choose not to pay because they are so far underwater it no longer makes financial sense to pay the mortgage. People who strategically default will be…

According to an article on Bloomberg today, the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, could run as high as $1 trillion, and will cost a minimum of $160 billion. The federal government seized the government sponsored entities (GSEs) in 2008 to avoid insolvency. Lets pause for a minute to consider…

The trials and tribulations of Fannie Mae have been well documented on this blog and throughout the media. Seized by the federal government in 2009, Fannie Mae has required $84 billion of taxpayer funds to remain solvent. On June 1, 2010, Fannie Mae’s new Loan Quality Initiative (LQI) becomes ef…