Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed financial advisor with Cap Wealth Management Tim Pagliara to the studio to discuss to outline the purposes of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Leahy: Our good friend financial advisor at Cap Wealth Management here in Franklin, Tennessee. You’ve been like the number one rated financial advisor in Tennessee by Forbes and several other groups for some time, haven’t you?
Pagliara: Yeah, we’ve been really blessed.
Leahy: Real blessed. He’s modest, folks. He’s very good. He’s very good at what he does. Also, the author of Another Big Lie: How the Government Stole Billions from the American Dream of Homeownership and Got Caught. This is crazy. I’m going to tell everybody what we got here. On yesterday, March 22, Tim as a chairman and chief investment officer of Cap Wealth, sent this letter to the clerk of the Supreme Court. His name is Scott Harris. And this is regarding Collins versus Yellen, and Yellen versus Collins. These are two cases your entire books about, right?
Pagliara: Yes.
Leahy: So here’s the letter:
Dear Mr. Harris, (Laughter) on March 18, Acting Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar sent the court a letter setting forth the government’s position that the Collins case has not been rendered moot by the post-oral argument Collins letter agreement amendment to the PSPA.
What’s the PSPA?
Pagliara: Preferred stock purchase agreement.
Leahy: Preferred stock purchase agreement.
(Continues reading letter) I won’t speculate about what the Solicitor General’s motives were in sending the letter to the court. However, as a private citizen, I would like to avail myself of the same courtesy extended to the Solicitor General. I’ve included nine copies of my recently published book, Another Big Lie: How the Government Stole Billions From the American Dream of Homeownership and Got Caught. I would appreciate you distributing them to the members of the court. With kindness. Personal regards, Timothy J. Pagliara. Chairman, Chief Investment Officer of Cap Wealth.
Well, now that’s a little bit of moxy there, my friend.
Pagliara: Isn’t this country great?
Leahy: Okay, so layout the story. Another Big Lie: How the Government Stole a Billion From the American Dream of Homeownership and Got Caught. What’s the story here?
Pagliara: Fannie and Freddie Mac.
Leahy: Okay, just stop. What’s Fannie Mae; what’s Freddie Mac?
Pagliara: They are the two largest mortgage packages of mortgages in the country. So they buy mortgages from small banks, other banks. They package them together and they sell them to investors.
Leahy: And they are quasi-governmental?
Pagliara: Right. Fannie Mae was set up by Roosevelt in 1938 in the Depression. Banks had a lot of bad loans on their books. Mortgages were about five years in duration. The average home price was dropping 50 percent. You had 25 percent unemployment and people were being put out in the street. And so they created Fannie Mae to buy those mortgages from the banks. Then they negotiated the 30-year mortgage.
Leahy: Ah ha! That’s where the 30-year mortgage was born!
Pagliara: That’s where it was born.
Leahy: In 1920. Home mortgages were five years?
Pagliara: That’s right. And so that compounded the problem. And so, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, every financial system has a flaw. It’s like the Death Star in Star Wars, where they always looking for that spot. And the flaw in our financial system is that it’s pro-cyclical meaning when things get bad, the regulators say, don’t loan money, pull it back, clean up your balance sheet. And so credit actually tightens at a time when you need credit.
And so, Fannie Mae is counter-cyclical. They pull loans off the books of banks in order to keep the flow of money moving in the mortgage market. They’ve done it since 1938. No one’s ever done it better. And that’s where it all started. The financial crisis, they were blamed and it doesn’t hold water. I’ve got it all in the book. 91 percent of all the mortgages that went bad in the financial crisis were issued by big banks.
Leahy: Big banks. So Fannie Mae, what about Freddie Mac?
Pagliara: Freddie Mac was created in the 60s to meet the same purpose that Fannie Mae did but they were the outlet for the savings and loans. They bought mortgages off the books of savings loans.
Leahy: I’ve already learned something here.
Pagliara: There we go.
Leahy: That’s good – Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. So it’s an easy way to kind of understand what their purpose was.
Pagliara: So there was a lot of jealousy about these institutions from the big banks. And so it became very convenient to blame them for the financial crisis.
Leahy: Of 2008.
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Fannie Mae” by AgnosticPreachersKid. CC BY-SA 3.0.
Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Tim Pagliara CIO of Cap Wealth Management to the studio to discuss the Supreme Court case that will address violations of the Administrative Procedures Act and the two issues of constitutionality and whether it will go back to the trial court for damages that shareholders are entitled to.
Leahy: Our guest is Tim Pagliara, author of Another Big Lie: How the Government Stole Billions From The American Dream of Homeownership and Got Caught. By the way, Tim, thanks so much for coming down to our Studios on Music Row. It’s kind of fun, isn’t it?
Pagliara: It’s a blast.
Leahy: I know you love radio, t0o. Everybody loves the radio.
Pagliara: I got a face for radio.
Leahy: So do I. I mean, you know, I get here at 5:05 a.m. in the morning. I don’t look, you know, not ready for prime-time cameras. I’ll tell you that for sure. So we’re talking about this case. Your book fantastic book – doing very well. It’s on Amazon and is number one in banking and finance right now.
Pagliara: Yes.
Leahy: And by the way, go get the book right now at Amazon.com. Just check out Another Big Lie. You’ll be able to order it and have it in your house in a day or two.
So what I find interesting about this: September 2008 is when the government, George W. Bush made the bad decision, as you said, to place Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae the mortgage purchasing institutes of qualified governmental institutes into conservancy. Then in 2013, ’14, the Feds say, ‘Let’s keep it in the conservancy,’ and misrepresented really how well those organizations were doing.
Pagliara: Yes.
Leahy: The lawsuit doesn’t get filed until 2015 because the people that had their money basically taken away the investors.
Pagliara: Actually, the first lawsuit was filed in June of 2013, the Collins case.
Leahy: So there was a whole bunch of cases. Now, how much money do the plaintiffs, how much have they had to spend to get this case up to the Supreme Court? And how long is it? What’s the path been?
Pagliara: If you take all of the lawsuits collectively, my estimate is those plaintiffs have spent almost 100 million dollars.
Leahy: And just in legal fees.
Pagliara: Just in legal fees.
Leahy: How much of their money has been taken by the federal government, would you guess?
Pagliara: $350 billion?
Leahy: $350 billion?
Pagliara: Yes.
Leahy: Wow.
Pagliara: Big numbers.
Leahy: And going to, I don’t know, fund Obamacare? Things like that”
Pagliara: That’s one of the places that the money went. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin on Maria Bartiromo show admitted that. He wouldn’t pinpoint exactly where the money was spent. But it went for a variety of non-budget, appropriated purposes.
Leahy: Wherever they wanted to just have their little…fund not known to the public go.
Pagliara: That’s right. Exactly. And they were battling Grover Norquist. They were battling the constraints of the Budget Control Act, and they acted in their best interest in violation of the property rights of shareholders. This is a big case. They can take the assets of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. You can imagine what Elizabeth Warren can concoct with wealth taxes and just taxing individuals.
Leahy: That’s all in the works right now. These are the kinds of things that they’re contemplating, right?
Pagliara: Yes.
Leahy: So in this particular case, Collins versus Yellen. And Yellen versus Collins.
Pagliara: This case came to the United States Supreme Court after an en banc hearing in the Fifth Circuit.
Leahy: So the first step is to go to a district court.
Pagliara: That’s right.
Leahy: Then it goes to the Fifth Circuit court.
Pagliara: It went to the Court of Appeals. So the plaintiff lost at the district court level. They went to the court of appeals, and it was a split decision. The plaintiffs appealed to the entire circuit in an en banc hearing.
Leahy: So the way it works is in the Fifth Circuit, they would assign what, three judges to look at it?
Pagliara: Yes.
Leahy: And they lost there.
Pagliara: It was a mixed decision. So there was enough confusion between the three judges.
Leahy: So the Fifth Circuit, we have 11 circuits courts of appeal in the country, of course, the worst being the ninth out in California, where they’re all a bunch of lefties. It’s getting better. Tell us a little bit about the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals here in our federal court system. Pretty good reputation?
Pagliara: Excellent reputation. They addressed civil rights in the 60s. They’ve had a reputation for taking on tough issues, being leaders, and thinking outside the box. And they decided to take this on in an En banc hearing.
Leahy: Now Let’s just stop and explain what an en banc hearing is for the Circuit Court of Appeals. What is that?
Pagliara: That’s when you take all of the justices and the different circuits, and they all come together collectively as a group, and they will hear additional arguments following a court hearing.
Leahy: So an en banc hearing of the Fifth Circuit would include 20 judges or something like that?
Pagliara: 16.
Leahy: 16 judges. And the Fifth Circuit covers Texas…
Pagliara: Parts of Louisiana.
Leahy: So here we go. There’s a sort of a split decision when the three-judge panel first reviews in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, it goes en banc to all 16. What happens there?
Pagliara: Well, there are two issues before the court. One was whether or not the federal housing finance administrator, which was overseeing the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac whether he was appointed constitutionally. Whether it was a constitutional appointment. And the Consumer Finance Protection Board case, which occurred earlier. The court found that that was unconstitutional.
Leahy: And by the way, it’s just for our listeners, the Consumer Financial Protection Board.
Pagliara: That’s a mouthful.
Leahy: It really was unconstitutional when passed in the Dodd-Frank Bill 2010 – the brainchild of wait for it – our favorite Native American Senator, Elizabeth Warren. That’s her brainchild. And so that key element of that particular law was found unconstitutional.
Pagliara: And so they did the same thing. The director of the Federal Housing Finance Administration, which was overseeing the conservatorship, was appointed in exactly the same way as the CFPB.
Leahy: Got it.
Pagliara: And this is where you get into that fourth branch of government. The issue there was they wanted to create an agency that the executive branch of government couldn’t remove the director. That’s what they did with the CFPB. That’s what they did with FHFA. And in the CFPB, the court ruled that that was unconstitutional. It had to be removable.
Pagliara: That’s right.
Leahy: And that’s why when Biden got elected, they got a new head of the CFPB.
Pagliara: So with the Fifth Circuit, the first issue is constitutionality. The Fifth Circuit already ruled that it was unconstitutional. They were split on the remedy. The issue before the Supreme Court is whether or not the plaintiffs are entitled to prospective or retroactive relief. If retroactive relief…
Leahy: It’s a lot of money.
Pagliara: It’s a lot of money.
Leahy: It’s like $350 billion.
Pagliara: Most legal scholars don’t believe that the plaintiffs, the shareholders, will get retroactive relief. They’ll get prospective relief and the President will be able to remove the Director immediately at will. It will be an at-will appointment like any other cabinet appointment.
Leahy: Too bad this case wasn’t decided before January of 2021, I think.
Pagliara: Well, President Trump honored the rule of law, and he waited for this to happen. And so he actually did a very good job with that. Now, the second issue before the court is called the Administrative Procedures Act [APA].
Leahy: 1950 act that sort of was the beginning of the decline of the legislative branch here in America because it’s been abused so much by the rulemaking procedures of various departments, cabinets, and agencies.
Pagliara: And so the violation of the APA, this is the governor that regulates the 10,000-pound gorilla being the federal government. the federal government tends to crush everybody that they get into litigation with. In fact, you can’t even get an injunction against it.
Leahy: So if the Department of Justice decided to go after somebody, for whatever reason, just even if you were totally innocent of any of these charges or claims, your legal fees would be, what? A half a million bucks, at least a million to defend?
Pagliara: Millions.
Leahy: Not exactly a fair deal.
Pagliara: It’s not a fair deal. So the court ruled that the government violated the APA, violated the very statute that they’re supposed to enforce that has been remanded to the trial court.
Leahy: Sent back.
Pagliara: And so the Supreme Court intervened, and they’re going to weigh in on this. So they got the two issues. They got constitutionality, and they have the whole issue of whether this goes back to the trial court for damages that the shareholders are entitled to.
Leahy: This will be fascinating to follow when we get back. I know you’re not in the land of being a predictor, but we’ll want to look at a couple of the possibilities that will come down in this very interesting Supreme Court decision.
Listen to the full third hour here:
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed author and financial advisor Tim Pagliara to the studio to discuss his book and the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and two looming lawsuits.
Leahy: Tim Pagliara author of a great new book, Another Big Lie: How the Government Stole Billions from the American Dream of Homeownership and Got Caught. So this is all related to him to the 2008 financial crisis and a lawsuit stemming from that. Give us the story.
Pagliara: Lots of lawsuits. So the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were put in conservatorship like a lot of banks.
Leahy: When was this?
Pagliara: September 2008.
Leahy: Okay, we remember that was the big campaign going on there, McCain versus Obama. End of September big joint conference. And they declared a financial crisis, and we’re going to do a whole bunch of different things to try and stop it.
Pagliara: And as I outlined in detail in my book, they never should have been put into conservatorship. Conservatorship holds an asset for someone else. In this case, it was the shareholders. They were supposed to work with them, build capital, make them stronger, and get them out of conservatorship. 12 years later, that’s still not the case.
Leahy: Let’s just set the stage here. So part of the actions taken by President George W. Bush then…
Pagliara: Yes.
Leahy: Was to put Fannie and Freddie Mac into conservativeship as of September of 2008. Wrong choice.
Pagliara: Wrong choice. President Obama was faced with a little thing called the Budget Control Act. Remember, old friend Grover Norquist.
Leahy: Americans for Tax Reform?
Pagliara: That’s right. And so they had constraints on the budget. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were two of and still remain two of the most profitable companies in the world. And so they had written down all these assets. And in 2012, a plan hatched by Jack Lew, Tim Geithner and the rest of the Obama Treasury.
Leahy: Tim Geithner, the Secretary Treasury.
Pagliara: And then Jack Lew succeeded him. So they came up with the idea that they were going to keep Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Conservatorship forever in violation of the statute that they were put into conservatorship with.
Leahy: Did they get away with that?
Pagliara: Well, so far, they have. They filed a false affidavit in federal court. They said that Fannie and Freddie were in a death spiral. And so they justified taking 100 percent of the earnings and profits of these two corporations in perpetuity.
Leahy: And where did those profits go?
Pagliara: They went to the United States Treasury.
Leahy: To prop up a budget that was out of control. Am I right?
Pagliara: That’s exactly right. And it was non-budgetary revenue. It was very controversial at the time. President Obama needed money for the cost-sharing reimbursements of the Affordable Care Act. And he had this non-budget revenue. So he was able to direct it to different places he wanted outside of the appropriations process of Congress. And that’s where everything started going wrong.
Leahy: Let’s just stop. When you say, outside the appropriations process of Congress. I was listening to Newt Gingrich the other day, former Speaker of the House and he says, look, we don’t have an appropriation process or even a legislative process in America today. That was what was intended by the founders when they put this together.
Pagliara: Madison Federalist 51. If men were angels, we wouldn’t need government because they’re not. What kind of government do we need? And Congress has always attempted to create this fourth branch of government where they get outside of the legislative and the executive and judicial review.
Leahy: So tell us about the lawsuit that has been involved here. The major one, what are the details of that and what your books about?
Pagliara: There are two different lawsuits. One is in the U.S. Court of Claims. It’s a taking case. That’s where every case goes where you’re alleging and unconstitutional, taking property, and access to $10,000. The second group of lawsuits are in federal court. And there are various different circuits in the federal court system. The one that was heard in December’s oral argument, Collins versus Yellen now. It was Collins versus Mnunchin. They substitute the new Treasury Secretary because they are suing the United States Treasury.
Leahy: Who was Collins?
Pagliara: Collins was just an individual investor that felt like the government stole his money, violated the terms of the conservatorship by taking 100 percent of the earnings and profits in perpetuity.
Leahy: His money was what invested in Fannie Mae?
Pagliara: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Leahy: Okay, so he put x amount of money into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Pagliara: And he got a little upset because the government took it all.
Leahy: Took it all.
Pagliara: 100 percent. And backtracking where I said, after they concocted this scheme to take 100 percent of the earnings and profits, they declared in front of a federal judge, they lied to a federal judge, and they said, these companies are in a death spiral.
Leahy: When you say they lied. Who lied and when?
Pagliara: The Treasury. Mario Yulette, who was your Treasury official. He filed a false affidavit, and Judge Lamberth’s Court in the D.C. Circuit said they were in a death spiral. And then we found out when we were finally able to take depositions, the chief financial officer of Fannie Mae, had just briefed them that they were entering a golden age of profitability.
And so by three months later, they had to delay their financials. In the first quarter of 2013, they had wrote up assets and paid the largest single dividend to the United States Treasury in the history of the country. It was so large that Jack Lew sent a letter to John Boehner and said, hey, we’re going to delay the budget crisis a little bit. We just found $60 billion. And they paid $60 billion to the government.
Leahy: And it’s still in conservatorship.
Pagliara: And it was still in conservatorship.
Leahy: Today it is still in conservatorship.
Pagliara: And since then, they have paid back over $350 billion to the United States Treasury.
Leahy: So let me ask you this. So the investors, the people who had invested in Fannie Mae AND Freddie Mac, That’s where their investment was?
Pagliara: That’s where their investment was and still is.
Leahy: If they win this lawsuit, are they going to get a lot of money?
Pagliara: The companies are going to declare the money that the government advanced them paid at 10 percent interest. Even the interest rate was high. Declare paid and they’ll go back to the capital markets and they’ll recapitalize and release. They’ve changed their regulations for all financial institutions. They have to hold more capital than they did prior to the financial crisis.
There are a lot of things that have changed. But in 12 years, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are even better into these than they were to serve the American homeowner. Their mortgages. They buy mortgages of less than $512,000. So the average Fanny Mae mortgage is $250,000. I mean, there are people that pay that much for cars now. So they serve Middle America. They serve first-time home buyers. They are indispensable in our financial system. They fill a hole that no one else has been able to fill.
Leahy: Now, first question, the book that you sent to the Supreme Court justices, do you think they’ll read the book?
Pagliara: I don’t know. (Leahy laughs) But if one of them picks it up and starts to read it will be fun. They don’t need my book to obviously to render a decision that’s in front of them. And it was a cheeky move. But the solicitor general, it’s just typical.
Leahy: Cheeky Tim Pagliara writes the book he sent to the nine Supreme Court justices.
Pagliara: No, it was a cheeky move by the solicitor general to send a letter and mislead the court. Totally inappropriate while the judges are in deliberation. They’re in the actual deliberation phase of the process that they go through following oral argument and we expect an opinion by May first. Sometime in May.
Leahy: So the oral argument has already been made.
Pagliara: It’s already been made. The fascinating point, though, about that, especially for a conservative radio talk show host. The most liberal members of the court, led by Justice Breyer, gave the government the hardest time in oral argument. They said, you nationalized these companies, and lawyers for the government said no, I didn’t. Yes, you did. You did it nationally. He said it three different times.
Leahy: Breyer?
Pagliara: Breyer.
Leahy: Okay, so now my head is spinning, right? Now Briar was pressing about these oral arguments heard in December? So we had Amy Coney Barrett. We had Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, the three Trump appointees. Did they ask any decent questions?
Pagliara: They did, but they kind of got drowned out by the Liberal members of the court.
Leahy: Who asked better questions?
Pagliara: They were on it. Gorsuch threw his hands up there, and he said, oh, my gosh, this is a heavy lift. I mean, this is a $350 billion theft.
Leahy: Wow. Wow.
Listen to the full third hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
