- Health Care Bill Nears Test Vote
- Thanksgiving Week Stuffed With Economic News
- Black Friday Deals May Not Signal Retail Comeback
- Victoria's Secret Hopes to Rekindle Desire for Lingerie
- UPS Sets New Rates For 2010
- Wall Street Jobs Slow to Return Despite Record Profits
- Investors to Goldman: Be Less Greedy
- Senate Panel to Mull Bernanke Nomination On Dec. 3
- $6M Verdict Upheld in McDonald's Strip Search Case
- How Stock Investors Can Play Holiday Travel
- Time Lapse World Series Is A Great Play
- Hirschhorn: Greed...or Fear
- My Top 10 Tech Toys for the Holidays
- iPhone a Better Gaming Platform Than Android?
- May Day For Dendreon
- 100% Mortgage Financing From USDA
- Holiday Tipping: Who And How Much
- Deep Discounts Should Make It a Very Tech-y Holiday
MOST SHARED
- Analyze This?
- Realty Check: USDA Home Loans
- The 'Real' Jobless Rate: 17.5% Of Workers Are Unemployed
- Health Care Bill Nears Test Vote
- Bove: Expect Goldman To Increase Dividend Meaningfully
- Warren Buffett and Bill Gates: Keeping America Great
- 100% Mortgage Financing From USDA
- Inside A Revolutionary Brain Cancer Treatment
Text Size 
The New York Times
The Obama administration on Friday rejected a proposal by Goldman Sachs to buy as much as $1 billion in tax credits from Fannie Mae, saying the deal would have amounted to a net loss for taxpayers.
“It is our view that the proposed sale would result in a loss of aggregate tax revenues that would be greater than the savings,” an administration official said on Friday.
Goldman Sachs [GS
Loading...
()
] had proposed to pay cash for Fannie Mae’s [FNM
Loading...
()
] tax credits, which are tied to investments in affordable housing but which the government-controlled mortgage-finance company cannot use because its losses have wiped out any tax liability for the foreseeable future.
Goldman executives had argued that the deal would provide much-needed capital to Fannie Mae, which it could use to finance additional low-income housing. Fannie Mae was bailed out by the government and put into a conservatorship in September 2008, and the government has propped it up with nearly $50 billion since then.
On Thursday, the company announced that it lost an additional $19 billion in the third quarter and would seek another $15 billion from the government.
Treasury officials said the Goldman proposal would have reduced the government’s costs on Fannie Mae, but that it would have drained even more revenue as Goldman and perhaps other investors used the tax credits to offset their profits.
“Withholding approval of the proposed sale affords more protection of the taxpayers than does providing approval,” the official said.
- Technology can make or break a fortune in the world of alternative energy.
- Many people are facing the holidays with substantially smaller incomes. Here’s how some are adapting.
- Jim Cramer is a proponent of stocks that pay healthy dividends, and here are his top five dividend plays.
- From salt, to lip balm to envelopes, it turns out that bacon flavoring can sell almost anything.
- The homebuyer's tax credit jacked sales for a while, but 2010 is looking weak. Now what?
- CNBC’s technology reporter Jim Goldman guides you through the best gadgets to buy this holiday season.
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes