Treasury made $25b on housing bailout

The Treasury Department has sold the last of $225 billion in mortgage-backed securities it began buying during the financial crisis, and it announced the program designed to keep the housing-finance market afloat made a $25 billion profit.

The purchases of bonds from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started in October 2008 and continued through December 2009 as part of a series of unprecedented government interventions into the financial system.

“The successful sale of these securities marks another important milestone in the wind-down of the government’s emergency financial-crisis response efforts,” Mary Miller, the Treasury’s assistant secretary for financial markets, said yesterday. “This program helped support the housing market during a critical moment for our nation’s economy and delivered a substantial profit for taxpayers.”

The bonds consisted mostly of 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages that were guaranteed by Fannie or Freddie, the housing-finance giants that were seized by the government in 2008 to avert their collapse. The Treasury bought the bonds to keep money flowing into the mortgage market, helping banks continue to make loans to homebuyers as the economy struggled.

Source: Dispatch.com