Push-Pull at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Ever since Fannie and Freddie were taken over by Uncle Sam, both consumers and politicians alike have been wondering what exactly the future holds for the two firms. Certainly from a pragmatic perspective they'll be eventually released back into the wild once they're "stable" enough for the task, but what will their functionality be? Will Freddie and Fannie expand their lending duties even as they struggle to eat billions of dollars in loan losses and streamline their operations? The answer right now seems to be maybe. Fannie Mae recently came out and said that it shrank its gross mortgage portfolio in February. The company's holdings dropped 1.3 percent annually to about $784.7 billion. Late payments on loans that the firm guarantees continued to go up in January, where the "seriously del