Here's a primer on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae from FinancialSense.com:

"....The United States economy is in the early phase of its worst housing price collapse since the 1930’s. No end is in sight. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as private stock companies, have gone to excesses in leveraging their risk, most as many private banks did. The financial market bought the bonds of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because they bet that the two were “Too Big To Fail,” i.e. that in a crisis the Government, that is the US taxpayer, would be forced to step in and bail them out. "The two, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, either own or guarantee about half of the $12 trillion in outstanding US home mortgage loans, or about $6 trillion. To put that number into perspective, the entire 27 member states of the European Union in 2006 had an annual GDP of slightly more than $12 trillion, so $6 trillion would be half the GDP of the combined European Union economies, and almost three times the GDP of the Federal Republic of Germany. "In addition to their home mortgage loans, Fannie Mae has another $831 in outstanding corporate bonds and Freddie Mac has $644 billion in corporate bonds. "Freddie Mac owes $5.2 billion more than its assets today are worth meaning under current US “fair value” accounting rules, it is insolvent. Fair value of Fannie Mae assets has dropped 66% to $12 billion and may as well go negative next quarter. As the home prices continue to fall across America, and corporate bankruptcies spread, the size of the negative values of the two will explode. "On July 14, symbolically the anniversary of Bastille Day, US Treasury Secretary Paulson, former chairman of the powerful Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs, stood on the steps of the US Treasury building in Washington, a clear attempt to add psychological gravitas, and announced that the Bush Administration would submit a bill proposal to Congress to make taxpayer guarantee of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae explicit. In effect, in the present crisis it will mean nationalization of the $6 trillion agencies. "The bailout by Paulson was accompanied by a statement by Bernanke that the Fed stood ready to pump unlimited liquidity into the two companies. "The Federal Reserve is rapidly becoming the world’s largest financial garbage dump as for months it has agreed to accept banks’ Asset Backed Securities including sub-prime real estate bonds as collateral in return for US Treasury bond purchases. Now it agrees to add potentially $6 trillion in GSE real estate debt to that. "However, the disaster in the two private companies was obvious as far back as 2003 when grave accounting abuses in the two companies were made public. In 2003 then President of the St. Louis Federal Reserve, William Poole publicly called for the US Government to cut its implied guarantee of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae claiming then that the two lacked capital to weather severe financial crisis. Poole, whose warnings were dismissed by then Fed Chairman Greenspan, called repeatedly in 2006 and again in 2007 for Congress to repeal their charters and avoid the predictable taxpayer cost of a huge bailout "As financial investors warn the Paulson bailout is not a bailout of the US economy but a direct bailout of his Wall Street financial cronies. What until recently had been the largest bank in terms of loans outstanding, Citigroup in New York, has been forced to raise billions in capital from Sovereign Wealth Funds in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere to remain in business. In its May announcement, Citigroup’s new Chairman Vikram Pandit announced plans to reduce the bank’s $2.2 billion balance sheet of liabilities. However, he never mentioned an added $1.1 trillion in Citigroup “off balance sheet” liabilities which include some of the highest risk deals in the US real estate and securitization era it so strongly backed. The Financial Accounting Standards Board in Connecticut, the official body defining bank accounting rules is demanding tighter disclosure standards. Analysts fear Citigroup could face devastating new losses as a result with value of liabilities exceeding the bank’s $90 billion market value. In December 2006 prior to the onset of the Tsunami crisis, Citigroup had a market value of more than $270 billion."

I guess it's time to use part of my stimulus check to by a larger bed. I'll need a bigger mattress under which I'll hide my money that I'll be taking out of my soon-to-go-bankrupt S&L.