Fannie, Freddie bailout to total $224B by 2013

By the end of next year, taxpayers will have paid $224 billion to prop up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, President Obama’s newly-released budget shows. According to Bloomberg News, $55 million of the rescue funds will be funneled back to the U.S. Treasury as dividends, so subtracting that would put the tally at $169 billion. Thus far, the Treasury has aided Fannie and Freddie with $151 billion, of which $20.2 billion has been paid back in dividends, since it seized the companies in 2008. This past October, the Federal Housing Finance Agency had estimated that at best, rescuing the mortgage giants would ultimately cost taxpayers $221 billion. At worst, it would cost $363 billion, the FHFA had said. In Obama’s budget, the companies were projected to be profitable enough by 2013 to “pay part, but not all” of their dividends from earnings by 2013. [Bloomberg]

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