I'm back... I see toxic lender IndyMac is toast, laying off 1/2 their staff, and Fannie and Freddie are likely insolvent. So what else did I miss?

Ho-hum, another day, another corrupt housing-bubble-company meltdown. Or two. Or three.

Goodbye Indymac employees. Thanks for orchestrating one of the greatest financial frauds in American history. Thousands more of you lost your jobs today, but like Angelo Mozilo at Countrywide, your kingpin of fraud (aka "liar's loans"), CEO Michael Perry, still walks the earth a free man.

Hopefully not for much longer.

The Great Unwinding is here folks. Right on schedule.

See it live. Right before your eyes. Every day. For a long, long time to come.

FLASH: Freddie Mac posts $2.5 billion loss. Or $3.7 billion. Or hell, who the f*ck knows. Mark to market anyone? You ain't seen nothin' yet folks

This turd will cost the taxpayers hundreds of billions when and if they mark to market one day.

Would you like to own the Countrywide, IndyMac and First Fed junk mortgages sitting on Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae's books today?

Exactly.

And what's Congress' best idea for getting out of this mess? Well it's raise the maximum mortgage limit and let them buy more loans of course!

Oh, dear god, we're so f*cked.

Big loss for Freddie Mac

Freddie Mac (FRE) posted a bigger-than-expected fourth-quarter loss and warned that a weakening economy will lead to higher credit losses in 2008 and 2009. The McLean, Va., mortgage lender lost $2.5 billion, or $3.97 a share, for the quarter ended Dec. 31, compared with a year-ago loss of $401 million, or 73 cents a share. Analysts on Wall Street were looking for a loss of $2.04 a share.

Under Freddie’s old accounting, its fourth-quarter loss would have been $3.7 billion.

Freddie’s promise to return to timely reporting was partly behind Wednesday’s decision by its regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, to lift limits on the mortgage-portfolio holdings of Freddie and its government-sponsored sibling Fannie Mae. The hope is that Fannie and Freddie can ease the housing crunch by making the mortgage market more liquid. But as Thursday’s numbers show, the companies have plenty of problems of their own.

FLASH: Freddie Mac one step closer to insolvency. Meanwhile, Ben Bernanke and Chuck Schumer want to double down.

Time for the revolution anyone?

Fannie and Freddie will implode. The US taxpayer will take on the burden. Banks will shut down. The printing presses will go into overdrive. And Ben Bernanke and Chuck Schumer should be tried for corruption and treason.

Freddie Mac has hired Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers to help it look into raising capital and said it is seriously considering cutting its fourth-quarter dividend in half.

The quasigovernmental company, which buys residential mortgages and mortgage-related securities, made the announcement as it reported a loss of $2 billion for the third quarter ended Sept. 30. Freddie Mac attributed the loss to a higher provision for credit losses and a markdown in the value of its assets.

And From CNN:

Mortgage financing firm Freddie Mac rocked the credit markets further Tuesday as it reported a large loss along with an $8.1 billion drop in the value of its assets, as it set aside $1.2 billion to cover credit losses.

The firm reported a net loss of $2 billion, or $3.29 a share, in the period, wider than the loss of $715 million, or $1.17 a share, a year earlier.

Everything that's wrong with US politics today is represented by Senator Chuck Schumer, the rent boy of JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and more

Senator Charles Schumer is simply an obedient little rent boy servicing his big investment bank masters, doing their bidding regardless of what's best for his constituents and America.

Chuck Schumer is shamelessly and obviously corrupt. But the entire US political system has been corrupted by a campaign financing system run amok. Now Schumer (and his best buddy Ben Bernanke) are calling for corrupt and deceptive house-of-cards Fannie Mae to take on $1 million Jumbo loans .

Sick folks. The system is sick. And Schumer represents the disease.

CHARLES E. SCHUMER: CAREER PROFILE (SINCE 1989)
Top Contributors

1 Goldman Sachs $458,440
2 Citigroup Inc $399,716
3 JP Morgan Chase & Co $325,200
4 Morgan Stanley $298,946
5 Bear Stearns $230,350
6 Merrill Lynch $226,150
7 UBS Americas $222,000
8 Credit Suisse Group $199,044
9 Lehman Brothers $181,450
10 Time Warner $167,500

And in related news:

Schumer wants Fannie and Freddie to be able to take on $1 million loans

If Bernanke's congressional brain fart becomes law, taxpayers will no longer just be serving as the backstop for private companies charged with assisting in the national goal of expanding affordable housing. (That was the original mission of Fannie and Freddie, as pointed out by the good folks at Housing Doom, who brought this story to my attention.) Nope, if Ben gets his way, you and I will be forced into the business of guaranteeing loans for Americans who simply have to have that 4,500-square-foot McMansion.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) thinks this is a peachy idea. Chuck -- who, of course, said absolutely nothing about the problems and excesses in lending while the housing bubble was inflating -- has been making hay about the correction for months.

That's understandable. After all, his Wall Street constituents -- Citigroup (NYSE: C), Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER), Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), and Wachovia (NYSE: WB) -- need a major metaphorical Heimlich to save them from choking on a diet of bad-loan dog food of their own making.

A taxpayer-sponsored plan to let Fannie and Freddie buy up big loans would certainly help them out, providing the "liquidity" that real investors -- quite rightly -- are loath to provide these days.