Turbo Timmy’s Christmas Eve Coup

Fannie Mae just registered another quarterly loss -- three straight years of losses, if you’re keeping score at home. Thus, Fannie is headed back to the well at Treasury for another $1.5 billion in aid. Make that $86.1 billion in total aid that Fannie has vacuumed up from the U.S. taxpayer to date.

There is little evidence the money Treasury is pumping into Fannie is accomplishing anything. It won’t repair or rebuild a single home. It won’t help a strapped homeowner avoid foreclosure. It won’t help a solvent homeowner build equity.

The Fannie bailout is like a neutron bomb -- destroying paper wealth, but leaving physical structures intact. You want some bigger black hole numbers?

• AIG has sucked up $118 billion so far -- with another $64 billion to go
• General Motors got a $49 billion bailout .

All told, the Fed and the U.S. government have lent, spent or guaranteed $8.2 trillion in taxpayer money to keep the financial system on life-support. They could have cleaned up ‘the worst oil spill in history’ over 254 times with the money that’s been spent on bailouts, backstops and boondoggles. BP, a publicly traded company, is, as they should, promising to take responsibility and foot the whole bill.

Turbo Timmy’s Christmas Eve Coup