Oh what a surprise. Paulsons former right hand man and advisor throught out the Bear Stearns crisis sold $509 million dollars of Fannie and Freddie preferred stock on the 21ST July 2008. Coincidence or what?. Wachovia Corp. said Tuesday it had liquidated its $509 million of government-sponsored enterprise preferred stock at a pretax loss of $171 million. The sales were completed on July 21 - more than a month before the government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - and were part of the Charlotte company's effort to reduce leverage on its balance sheet, Wachovia said. It did not say whether the preferred shares were in Fannie, Freddie, or both GSEs. Several other banking companies have disclosed financial hits on GSE preferred stock since the seizure of Fannie and Freddie was announced Sunday. Wachovia also said Tuesday it had sold about $1.3 billion of auction-rate securities that it had repurchased under settlements with regulators. When it announced the settlements in August, the $812.4 billion-asset Wachovia estimated that about $8.5 billion of the bonds were eligible for repurchase and that after redemptions and planned sales it would hold about $3.1 billion of them at June 30 next of year. It had previously set aside $500 million to cover legal expenses and estimated market losses associated with the auction-rate securities. At the time it said it planned to set aside another $275 million. http://www.financial-planning.com/a...iti-takes-hit-gse-preferred-wachovia.html?pg=
It had previously set aside $500 million to cover estimated market losses.... ------------- I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one who does this.