Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could require as much as a $99.6 billion government bailout in the event of severe economic downturn, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) annual “stress test” released this week.
“In the Severely Adverse scenario, incremental Treasury draws are projected to range between $34.8 billion and $99.6 billion depending on the treatment of deferred tax assets,” the report concluded. That’s down more than 20 percent from 2016 when the range was between $49.2 billion and $125.8 billion.
The report does not predict another collapse. The results are “modeled projections in response to ‘what if’ exercises based on assumptions about Enterprise operations, loan performance, macroeconomic and financial market conditions, and house prices. The projections do not define the full range of possible outcomes. Actual outcomes may be different.”



