Ownership and Implicit Guarantee
Some of the GSEs (such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ) have been privately owned but publicly chartered; others, such as the Federal Home Loan Banks, are owned by the corporations that use their services. GSE securities carry no explicit government guarantee of creditworthiness, but lenders grant them favorable interest rates, and the buyers of their securities offer them high prices. This is partly due to an "implicit guarantee" that the government would not allow such important institutions to fail or default on debt. This perception has allowed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to save an estimated $2 billion per year in borrowing costs. This implicit guarantee was tested by the subprime mortgage crisis, which caused the U.S. government to bail out and put into conservatorship Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in September, 2008.
Every GSE prospectus contains the following text, or something virtually identical, in bold letters, and has since before the sub-prime loans were originated: "Neither the certificates nor interest on the certificates are guaranteed by the United States, and they do not constitute a debt or obligation of the United States or any of its agencies of instrumentalities other than Fannie Mae." Critics of the GSE's have challenged the "implicit guarantee" since before the sub-prime crisis.
Read more about this topic: Government-sponsored Enterprise
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