The combined debt load of the two mortgage holding companies is over $5 trillion, and equivalent to the entire US national debt.  To date the Fannie/ Freddie debt has been ‘off balance sheet’ and therefore not included in the national debt.  Economist They [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] hold or guarantee some $5.2 trillion of the nation’s $12 trillion of mortgages, backed by the thinnest wafer of capital, meaning their collapse would imperil the already paralysed American housing market. Yet as Joshua Rosner, an analyst at Graham Fisher, a research firm, points out, nationalising them, a stark choice for the … Continue reading Fannie and Freddie double the US national debt