Quote from Daal:
In some email exchanges with John Hempton, he pointed me a scenario that could sorta bail the shareholders out.
If FNM FRE were to raise $30b in preferred stock yielding 10%, this would cost them $6b(4%+ more than the 6% rate that they 'should' be paying) for 5 years(he assumes the government will try to get the money back quickly so the gses would redeem the PFs)
Now for a number of reasons I think its more likely a treasury bailout will send the stock down not up, they include
-just before election and the republicans always hated the gses, so there is political pressure to not do a full blown bailout
-paulson knows he will have to testify and will be interviewed and asked about this('you put $30b in tax payer money at risk') over and over again, he needs talking points
-he will leave office shortly after and will not want to leave as the guy who made a massive bailout
So hempton cheap offering is a possibility but it seems unlikely that the treasury would deal with moral hazard by giving a deal that the private market wouldn't give to anybody else(even the cheap offering costs $15b over 5y, $1.5b per company a year, their 'peak' pretax earnings are about $7.5b, so stock funds wont like the fact there will be little in earnings for some years). it seems likely shareholders will take some kind of haircut(perhaps a steep one) but I'm going to have to watch this closely because I might have to take profits before they go away if its a fullblown bailout