Bill Ackman Calls for Merging Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Amid Trump's IPO Push
'A merger would enable them to achieve huge synergies both in their operations and in the trading price and spreads of their MBS, savings which could be passed along to consumers in the form of reduced mortgage rates,' Ackman said. MBS refers to mortgage-backed securities, which are investments in home loans and other real estate debt.
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Los Angeles Times
7 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
U.S. sanctions Mexican drug cartel associates accused of scamming elderly Americans
MEXICO CITY — The U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions Wednesday on more than a dozen Mexican companies and four people it says worked with a powerful drug trafficking cartel to scam elderly Americans in a multimillion-dollar timeshare fraud. The network of 13 businesses in areas near the seaside tourist destination of Puerto Vallarta were accused of working with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, a group designated by the U.S. government as a foreign terrorist organization. In a scheme dating back to 2012, four cartel associates are accused of defrauding American citizens of their life savings through elaborate rental and resale schemes, according to a Treasury statement. In the span of six months, officials said they were able to document $23.1 million sent from mostly people in the U.S. to scammers in Mexico. The sanctions imposed by the administration of President Trump would prohibit Americans from doing business with the alleged cartel associates and block any of their assets in the U.S. 'We will continue our effort to completely eradicate the cartels' ability to generate revenue, including their efforts to prey on elderly Americans through timeshare fraud,' U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. In past years, the administration of then-President Biden also sanctioned associates and accountants related to such schemes. The Wednesday announcement was made amid an ongoing effort by the Trump administration and the Mexican government to crack down on cartels and their diverse sources of income. The U.S. Treasury Department has slapped sanctions on a variety of people from a Mexican rapper who it accused of laundering cartel money to Mexican banks facilitating money transfers in sales of precursor chemicals used to produce fentanyl. The announcement also came one day after Mexico sent 26 high-ranking cartel figures to the U.S. in the latest major deal with the Trump administration as Mexico tries to avoid threatened tariffs.
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
GOLDSTEIN: Carney's energy minister makes business case for natural gas
Federal Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson says he 'knows there are buyers' for Canada's liquified natural gas (LNG) globally, quite the change in emphasis from former prime minister Justin Trudeau's argument there was no business case for such projects. 'What I can tell you from the conversations that the prime minister has been having, the minister of foreign affairs has been having, the minister of international trade has been having, the conversations I've been having, our allies are very interest in Canadian LNG,' Hodgson said on Tuesday in an interview on The Vassy Kapelos Show. When asked about competition from the U.S, which is ramping up its LNG export capacity, Hodgson responded: 'Our production is much closer to Asian markets. Our production is much cleaner than the Americans in terms of carbon footprint.' That's a turnaround from previous arguments by Trudeau, as a parade of foreign leaders came to Canada seeking Canadian LNG as an alternative to importing LNG from Russia, in the wake of Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Trudeaus said at the time there was no business case for LNG projects — meaning Canada was (and still is) shipping almost all of its natural gas to the U.S. by pipeline at discount prices — although he was talking about Canada's potential capacity to ship LNG to European markets by tanker from Canada's East Coast. That said, Trudeau was generally unenthusiastic about exporting Canada's natural gas abroad, advocating instead for developing alternative energy sources such as green hydrogen. GUNTER: Trudeau cost Canada a chance to get into global LNG game — Trump and U.S. are reaping the benefit LILLEY: Carney promises new trading relationships, can't handle U.S. Since then, one large-scale export facility — LNG Canada — has been completed in Kitimat, B.C. To be fair, this was approved under the Trudeau government. It contributed $275 million to its completion in 2019, describing the $40-billion project as 'the largest single private sector investment in the history of the country … which will ultimately create over 10,000 jobs, as well as lead to billions of dollars in direct government revenues and hundreds of millions of dollars in construction contracts for Indigenous businesses.' It began shipping LNG by tanker to Asian markets in June, the first project of its kind in North America with direct access to the Pacific Coast. There are six other LNG projects currently in the works — all based in B.C. — and if all of them are completed, Canada could have the capacity to ship 50 million tonnes of LNG abroad eventually. However, for that to happen, Prime Minister Mark Carney's government will have to modify or reverse a number of regulations and laws passed by the Trudeau government. This includes a cap on Canada's annual oil and gas emissions; the Impact Assessment Act, dubbed the 'no pipelines bill' by critics; and Canada's current target of lowering our greenhouse gas emissions to at least 40% below 2005 levels by 2030. (According to the latest government data, Canada's emissions as of 2023 were just 8.5% below 2005 levels and on track to miss the 2030 target.) Before Parliament adjourned in June, the Carney government passed the Building Canada Act to speed up the construction of so-called nation-building projects, but the details of what projects it is considering haven't yet been revealed. Finally, despite Trudeau's lack of enthusiasm for natural gas in favour of greener energy sources, replacing coal-fired electricity with natural gas globally would be one of the world's most effective ways of reducing global emissions, since natural gas burns at half the carbon intensity of coal. RECOMMENDED VIDEO
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
Fannie Mae Former Employees Sue Company, Pulte for Defamation
(Bloomberg) — Forty-one former employees of Fannie Mae on Wednesday sued the company, its chief executive and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte for alleged defamation related to their dismissals in April. Sunseeking Germans Face Swiss Backlash Over Alpine Holiday Congestion The US-Canadian Road Safety Gap Is Getting Wider To Head Off Severe Storm Surges, Nova Scotia Invests in 'Living Shorelines' Five Years After Black Lives Matter, Brussels' Colonial Statues Remain For Homeless Cyclists, Bikes Bring an Escape From the Streets The ex-employees of the government-controlled mortgage giant are seeking damages amounting to more than $2 million per person, according to complaints filed in Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia, which were distributed to the media by their lawyers. The FHFA and Fannie Mae did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Fannie announced in April that more than 100 employees had been removed 'for unethical conduct, including the facilitation of fraud.' In a Fox News interview the following day, Pulte said an investigation found that workers were making donations to 'the internal company charity' and then getting kickbacks. The legal challenge comes as the Trump administration is weighing a sale of shares in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, targeting an offering as early as this year at a valuation that would raise about $30 billion for the government. The dismissals have been linked to alleged violations of Fannie's matching gift program, which matches employees' charitable donations to 'a cause or organization of their choice' of up to $5,000 annually. Three Democratic lawmakers questioned the mass termination of mostly Indian-American employees around the time it was announced. Representative Suhas Subramanyam joined two House colleagues in writing an April letter to Pulte and Fannie's CEO Priscilla Almodovar. The lawmakers expressed concern that participation in the program and donations to Indian-American organizations 'may have been used as a pretext to make indiscriminate cuts to Fannie Mae's workforce and to tarnish employees' reputations' without proper investigation. The complaints filed in Fairfax said that the former employees were summarily ousted by email and phone, and 'despite multiple requests' have never been given any evidence to support the claims against them. It's not the first lawsuit to emerge from the mass termination. Last month, another complaint was filed in the District of Columbia by 66 of the former employees, all of Indian descent, alleging that the removals amounted to discrimination based on national origin and age. Americans Are Getting Priced Out of Homeownership at Record Rates Dubai's Housing Boom Is Stoking Fears of Another Crash Bessent on Tariffs, Deficits and Embracing Trump's Economic Plan Why It's Actually a Good Time to Buy a House, According to a Zillow Economist A $340 Million New York Office Makeover Is Converting Boardrooms to Bedrooms ©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
