Welcome to the weekly roundup of great articles, facts and figures. These are the weekly finds that made our eyes pop.

Banks Want Pieces of Freddie & Fannie Mae

The New York Times reports Banks want to securitize mortgages with a government guarantee:

Wells Fargo and some other large banks would like private companies, perhaps even themselves, to become the new housing finance giants helping to bundle individual mortgages into securities — that would be stamped with a government guarantee.

The banks have presented their ideas publicly through trade groups. Housing industry consultants and people familiar with recent meetings at the Treasury Department say these banks view the government’s overhaul of the mortgage market as a potential profit opportunity. Treasury officials have met with executives from several institutions, including Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse, according to a public listing of the meetings.

Incredible, instead of regulating derivatives which caused the Financial Crisis, banks now want to make them and get the government to guarantee them.

We Gives Businesses Our Money, They Move to China

Let me take you back to Christmas Eve, 2009. It was a time to wrap gifts for loved-ones. That's how the Obama Administration felt about the financial industry when it lifted all caps in emergency bailout money to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That means the taxpayer was on the hook for all losses at these two mortgage giants no matter how large the losses.
The move caused a slight stir, but never got the attention of the American public because the announcement was timed to coincide with the peak season of distraction. And so it was forgotten...but not by Fannie and Freddie.

When you know you are about to do something unpopular you try to hide it. For instance, the public would never know that over 140 banks (not counting credit unions) have gone under this year because their announced failures only happen on Friday evenings.
Another extremely unpopular event would be another round of bailouts for Wall Street banks. That's why the provisions are hidden deep within the financial reform bill.

For all its heft, the bill doesn’t once mention the words “too-big-to-fail,” the main issue confronting the financial system.
Instead, it supports the biggest banks. It authorizes Federal Reserve banks to provide as much as $4 trillion in emergency funding the next time Wall Street crashes. So much for “no-more-bailouts” talk. That is more than twice what the Fed pumped into markets this time around. The size of the fund makes the bribes in the Senate’s health-care bill look minuscule.

Believe it or not, this is not the most outrageous thing Washington has done in the last week.

by Zach Carter, Media Consortium MediaWire Blogger

President Barack Obama unveiled his administration's plan to fight foreclosures on Wednesday. Unfortunately, the most important element of the program will require Congressional action—and the banking and business lobbies are already on the attack. The Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan has three chief components: