hardincap

thx cherzeca, helpful to get your thoughts as always. its rather disturbing how slow the courts can be. at least the stall and delay strategy has finally run out of road. good riddance

if the merits are as clear as you say, why shouldn't this be decided quickly? say we go another month or so without a decision, so now its taken as long to review the decision as to write it. to the legally untrained observer, this delay would seem to undermine your merits argument, and give credence to an alternative scenario: that somehow the government wins at least in part, or that there is outside interference (can an order be stalled if the Ds are negotiating a settlement?)

it took 4 months for sweeney to issue her order on the 56 docs and its been 3 months since the writ. there seems to be a reasonable and growing chance that the government wins mandamus at least in part, just based on the delay.

Obama would have to take Trump at his word that he won't release the docs and he'd also have to rely on Watt to carry out the wishes of his previous boss against those of his current boss. Tricky to say the least. The obama admin has always been acting on ideology, not pragmatism, with respect to the GSEs. This is sort of like a religious war. I think hell freezes over before they settle and release the GSEs

How would a settlement work when obama has already left? I think that train has left the station

mnuchin intimating that he has a strong POV on what to do w/ the gses, having been in the industry for 30 years, was pretty big to me. no rational person with a historical perspective will want to "kill" the gses. and to preserve it you have to respect its shareholders

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/former-fannie-mae-cfo-trumps-treasury-pick-can-get-fannie-out-of-government-control-reasonably-fast-180158855.html?soc_src=mail&soc_trk=ma i think investors severely underestimate the political baggage of fannie mae. as mclean says, cold calculus of wall st doesnt work in washington. for anyone interested in understanding the politics of the gses, i highly recommend howard's book Mortgage Wars

pretty sure cooper would have to recuse himself on both sides, but we can hope he'd have some influence as SG over the cases

wow, what would happen to all the court cases if cooper becomes solicitor general?

the problem is humans are wired for stories, and the most persuasive stories arent necessarily aligned with the truth (in fact its often the opposite). the "gse caused the crisis" narrative may be The Big Lie, but you cant deny its effectiveness. and unfortunately, the one thing we can be certain of about trump is that he will tell the most compelling story, truth be damned. i think its fair to say that the truth re: fannie and freddie is too complicated and uncomfortable for most people to overcome The Big Lie

mnuchin is an investor in paulson's fund (though just <1m) https://extapps2.oge.gov/201/Presiden.nsf/PAS+Index/B003D12FCD5F4C3F852580A5004FF6A4/$FILE/Mnuchin,%20Steven%20T.%20final278.pdf

@cherzeca, i think you're reading too much into it. "reform" isnt really in the vocabulary of finance professionals, i think he simply used that word by default or habit. we'll have to wait and see what he really has in mind. i think its worth noting though that according to tim howard, at a recent private meeting mnuchin stated that he hasn't given the gses much thought

+1. boards are an echo chamber; people are wired to derive psychological comfort out of making bias confirming statements we are still in highly speculative mode in terms of trying to understand what mnuchin/trump's intentions are.. some caution is in order

2) is something im worried about, and mclean thinks this is the most likely scenario http://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/news/voices/why-gse-recapitalization-talk-is-premature-1093759-1.html

much ado about nothing, imo. icahn always had trump's ear. this title doesnt really change anything

brown asks mnuchin for clarification on gses:

i believe an opinion was released on a non tues/fri a number of weeks ago, so its not a hard and fast rule i see mandamus decision as key right now. if rejected and docs released, even millet may side w/ Ps

gotta admit high volume down days like today make me nervous about a possible news leak

interesting post on trump: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/reflections-trump-presidency-one-month-after-election-ray-dalio?trk=prof-post

you can say the same thing about buffett: being gun shy (or said differently, extremely picky) is sort of his genius anyway, dont mean to go off topic. i am long f&f so im obviously comfortable with the odds as i perceive it, but i regularly try to talk my optimism down

luke, disagree. i dont think you can come up with any sort of precision w these probability estimates. bayes theorem tells us to focus on the base rate and the error rate (false pos), but how you do that with any sort of precision in a socio-political situation like this is beyond me. i think keynes had an argument that that you can only say whether the odds are greater than or less than 50%, but not much more than that. we also need to build in a margin of safety that accounts for our long confirmation bias. easier said than done

http://seekingalpha.com/article/4030454-fannie-mae-sold-preferred-common @cherzeca seems like wishful thinking to me, but curious what you think. wishful thinking bc i doubt Ps will want to push their luck and risk getting on the bad side of trump

recall sweeney released documents that included internal fannie mae projections just in time for oral arguments. that turned out to be very significant, as hume used it to disabuse ginsberg of the notion that only the cfo, and not fhfa, had an optimistic forecast of the gses. clearly the 56 documents that is under mandamus appeal could be just as significant if not more so. so it seems to me entirely reasonable for appeals court to wait on these documents, if only to "hedge" themselves (against the possibility of issuing an opinion that ends up later obsoleted by new documents) i also think based on the oral arguments and the complexity of this case, we can expect lots of disagreement and thus assume a dissent is being written

yes that is the upside scenario. i generally prefer to focus on downside though. can you imagine how much blowback there would be if we get another lamberth? even if mnuchin wanted to privatize fannie on terms favorable to shareholders, it could cost him political capital that he may not be willing (or able) to pay

with a "friendly" treasury sec coming in, i think we want more delays not less. why risk another lamberth? the nws *must* be cancelled as a necessary condition to privatization