Fannie Mae (the Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddie Mac (the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation) are companies that buy mortgages from lenders. Those lenders, by selling loans to the companies, have more cash on hand to lend to other individuals. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac then “repackage” the mortgages and sell them as securities to other investors. These are guaranteed investments. Investors will receive the returns promised regardless of the quality of the underlying mortgages.

Those promises have been in danger lately, as news traveled that without intervention, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac might fail. The companies were having trouble making their obligations to investors.

Backed by the government or not?

While Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government sponsored enterprises, the government until recently did not back the companies and guarantee that investors would be paid in the event the companies failed. That was changed recently when the Federal Housing Finance Agency, a government organization, took the two organizations under conservatorship. Shareholders in the two companies will find that their shares will be devalued even beyond the recent declines in order to help the companies pay their obligations. The U.S. Treasury now has the ability to provide funds directly to these companies to ensure their stability.

Interestingly, Herb Allison will be the new CEO of Fannie Mae. Astute Consumerism Commentary readers recognize this name as the former CEO of TIAA-Cref. Many reports from current and former TIAA-Cref employees tend to agree that Mr. Allison did not do such a great job of cleaning up the mess left by his predecessor at that company.

The possible effects of the takeover

Dean Baker, an economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a think tank in Washington, D.C., says, “I think that the immediate impact will be somewhat positive. You’ll see some drop in mortgage rates because it’ll decrease the uncertainty” that had pushed mortgage rates up this summer.

Baker says he can imagine a drop in mortgage rates of around a quarter of a percentage point, give or take about 5 basis points. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. “It’s something,” he says. “It’s not going to make a huge difference.”

Why aren’t people buying homes right now? It’s not because interest rates are too high and it’s not because the majority can’t qualify for loans (though I’m sure many people in fact cannot). House prices are still too high. Well, a buyer perceives prices to be too high for what he or she believes to be the real value of the house, but perception is reality. If they believe the price to be too high, they won’t buy, regardless of the mortgage interest rate.

I’m not an economist, but I think in general prices need to fall farther before the housing market picks up and people start believing there is a “buyer’s market.” I don’t think a drop in rates of a quarter of a percentage point will make that big of a difference.

If this takeover amounts to not much of a difference in the lives of Americans, is it really worthwhile for the government to seize these semi-private, semi-public corporations? Remember that now that they are backed by the government, taxpayers are footing the bill for rescuing investors in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (that is, the lenders). Perhaps, if you consider that the alternative—letting the companies fail—might have a more devastating effect on the economy.

Photo: respres
How the Fannie and Freddie takeover affects you, Bankrate.com via MSN MoneyCentral

It’s barely been a month since the iPhone update which allows people to download applications written by 3rd-party developers, and there are already more than 1,000 to choose from. Here are a few of the more promising entries in the field of Personal Finance:

Loan Shark

(Web | iTunes)

It’s unreasonable to expect that a person, when presented with a loan offer, can glance at the numbers and determine whether the salesperson is trying to rip them off. If it hadn’t happened to a friend of mine, I might’ve chalked this scenario up to simple paranoia, but it does happen. Thankfully, what with the Internet empowering us all, it happens less and less.

If all you’re looking to do is check the math on a loan offer, there are other ways to go about it. For example, you could point your mobile browser to CalcNexus’s Auto Loan Calculator and get an answer pretty quickly. The major advantage to the Loan Shark iPhone app is that it saves loan details to a Favorites screen so you can compare offers from different banks.

It also shows amortization tables and works as well for credit cards and home loans. For my money, in this case US$4.99, that’s a lot more convenient than carrying around a notepad and a pen.

Save Benjis

(Web | iTunes)

At some point (for me this happens weekly), you’ve been in a store, looking at something you probably want to buy, and you thought to yourself, “I could get this cheaper somewhere else.” Save Benjis answers your doubts for you in a matter of seconds. Best of all, it’s free, so you have nothing to lose if you want to give it a try.

Pick & Choose – Groceries

(Web | iTunes)

“Okay, I’m at Target. What was that other thing I needed to buy?” The analog lifestyle solution to this conundrum was always to keep a shopping list on the fridge and take it with you. But more often than not, I’m coming straight from work, or I forgot the list at home.

You may have noticed by now that I have a sort of contempt for paper records. Anyway…

This app has a built-in database of over 1,500 grocery items, so you barely need to type anything. In fact, I think I’m going to buy this app right now.

If you have variable rate student loans, mark July 1, 2008 on your calendar. After that date, you can lock in interest rates 3 percentage points lower than what’s available now. I’m not eligible for lowering the rates on my student loans because I’ve already consolidated and I have no new student loans to add into the mix. But if you haven’t consolidated yet, you may be able to benefit from rates as low as 3.62%.

I have about $11,000 left to pay on my student loans at 4.25%. As savings interest rates have decreased recently, I’ve been increasing the amount I’ve been paying to eliminate this debt. This loan is the only debt I have that requires interest payments, and I’ll be happy to pay it off.

Earlier this month I sent $750 to student loan repayment. That payment is up from $500 the month before, $250 earlier this year, and about $150 earlier than that. In July, I’ll either maintain my $750 payment or increase the amount to $1,000 depending on my June financial results.

Update! There are a lot of questions being asked already, so here are some details.

• Since many lenders no longer perform student loan consolidation, you may be better off starting your search with the U.S. Department of Education who will.
• Only variable-rate student loans are eligible. All student loans initiated after July 1, 2006 are fixed-rate loans, so these loans will not qualify for the lower interest rate, but you can still consolidate multiple loans to reduce your number of payments, your minimum due, and extend your total repayment duration.
• If you’re still in school, you are not eligible for the lowest rate. If you’re in the six-month grace period, you can receive the lowest interest rate on the loans that are over two years old (usually from your freshman and sophomore years). If you’ve waived your grace period you’ll only qualify for a higher rate.
• If you’ve already consolidated your student loans, you won’t qualify for the lowest rate.

Note: The Department of Education’s loan consolidation application will not indicate the new, low interest rate until July 1. Consolidation applications are on hold until that time.

3.6% student loans: Consolidate now, Liz Pulliam Weston, MSN Money, June 23, 2008.

You’ve probably been concerned at one time or another with your credit worthiness: the somewhat squishy way that lenders determine whether you’re going to repay, for example, a home loan. I say “squishy” because ultimately, these decisions are made by human beings in a temporal landscape. We bought our house in June 2007, and if we had tried just one month later, when rules were stricter, it likely wouldn’t have happened.

Nobody is allowed to know the exact algorithm that produces your credit score, but even if we had access, it probably wouldn’t be the same from month to month.

One thing that we thought we knew was that if you have too many open accounts, it can hurt your credit score. Now, a product support manager for Fair Isaac Corp. (where the term “FICO” comes from) is answering questions at BankRate.com, and in part of the answer to the first question, he replies:

It’s just not true that you can have too much available credit. That by itself is never a negative with the score … There really is never any good reason to close an account.

You’ll probably want to read the rest of the article to get all the specifics, and see what else he says on what does and doesn’t hurt your credit score.

A new study by researchers at Vanderbilt University Law School and University of Oxford reveals a strong correlation between approvals for payday loans and bankruptcy filings. Considering that people who are rejected for payday loans have other (limited) options for credit, it’s surprising that the rate of bankruptcy isn’t as high with this group. It’s quite possible that this can be interpreted as a cause-and-effect relationship. That is, being approved for payday loans increases the probability of filing bankruptcy.

Individuals who have been approved for payday loans have a probability of filing for bankruptcy within two years 2.48 percentage points higher than the probability for individuals who were rejected for payday loans.

It sounds obvious, but scientific findings that payday loans contribute to bankruptcy confirm any hunches. Payday loans a short-term loans with fees which, if viewed in terms of interest rates, are very high. Rates of 100% APR or higher are common. The loans are designed to be paid back in two weeks, however, so you only see a 100% interest rate if you roll over from one loan to the next for an entire year.

Most people who have the need to get cash quickly in the form of a payday loan don’t continue the cycle continuously for a year, but many do become repeat customers. The typical payday loan borrower will apply for about five more payday loans totalling over $1,500 within one year after the initial acceptance.

The study shows that interest from payday loans accounts for about 11% of the a bankrupty filer’s total interest burden, and this 11% could be what finally pushes an individual into declaring bankruptcy—the proverbial straw.

These results are consistent with the interpretation that payday loan applicants are financially stressed; first-time loan approval precedes significant additional high interest rate borrowing; and the consequent interest burden tips households into bankruptcy.

The authors of the research discount the idea that individuals preparing to declare bankruptcy quickly accumulate as much debt as possible to maximize bankruptcy’s “benefit.”

While it’s certainly possible to borrow money through a payday loan, pay the entire balance plus interest when it is due, and never become a payday loan customer again, this is not a typical scenario. Furthermore, those who have low credit scores may be rejected by payday loan companies and turn to pawn loans instead, with similarly high interest rates. Yet, the payday loan customers have the increased incidence of brankrupcty.

Do Payday Loans Cause Bankruptcy? [Paige Marta Skiba, Vanderbilt University Law School and Jeremy Tobacman, University of Oxford]
via Research Recap via pfblogs.org

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