I have an economics professor that is such a hippie-liberal-douche, it pains me to hear him speak. Every now and then, though, he says something completely uncharacteristic that I agree with. Being that it is my 8am class on Tu/Th, it leaves me with the rest of the day to ponder.

We give the Detroit Big 3 a ton of crap for being slow in transitioning to fuel efficient and alternative fuel automobiles. They still make trucks and SUVs like they did in the prime of the 90’s waste, F-THAT! Good luck with your losses…right? After some poking around after class, I ran across a fun stat – the same Big 3 spends $25B a quarter or over $8B a MONTH in pension benefits.

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While we were all watching our parents cry over their lost retirement accounts and House Republicans decided not the bail out the rich – I was expecting stigmata or the seas to turn to blood. Instead, I found a little blurb on CNN that noted a $25B loan to the auto industry that was quietly approved with some MAJOR implications.

First, the background: the American automakers have been struggling with pensions and pay increases for union workers who have dedicated their lives to American cars. Unfortunately, the automakers themselves have the reflexes of a 90 year old Parkinson’s patient.

While the world is moving forward with hyper-efficient cars, American automakers have what’s called a ‘backlog.’ In essence, they can’t start building efficient cars until they finish all the gas-guzzling SUVs that they currently have cued for production. Over $4.5B in SUV parts are not even in production yet, but “have to be used” before the companies will move onto the basic planning stages of new vehicles. (more…)

Let us begin in the beginning…

Freddie Mac’s full legal name is the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation and Fannie Mae is the Federal National Mortgage Association.

Fannie Mae was created in 1938, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, at a time when millions of families could not become homeowners, or risked losing their homes, for lack of a consistent supply of mortgage funds across America. The government established Fannie Mae in order to expand the flow of mortgage funds in all communities, at all times, under all economic conditions, and to help lower the costs to buy a home. In 1968, Fannie Mae was re-chartered by Congress as a shareholder-owned company, funded solely with private capital raised from investors on Wall Street and around the world. Freddie Mac was created in 1970 to support the same operations as Fannie Mae.

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Twenty-four-year-old fashion model Fabiana Semprebom was born in Brazil from a Brazilian father and an Italian-American mother. She was discovered at a mall in Sao Paolo, and is now represented by Louisa Models, Supreme, Ford Models (New York/LA), Mega Models (São Paulo), 2pm Model Management, Women Management (Milan) and Ford Models Europe (Paris). That’s what we call a discovery!

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