Cleaning up the mess that remains

At least the Obama administration isn’t saying “Mission Accomplished.”
In marking the anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ demise, the administration understandably focused on how far we’ve come since, and on the various exit strategies in the works.

Lehman Brothers has been at the center of the narrative of what went wrong last year, and that makes it much easier for the administration to tell a story of triumph rather than the more uncomfortable legacy of dysfunctional companies and hidden toxic assets.

Coinciding with President Barack Obama’s speech in New York, the Treasury released a paper today, titled “The Next Phase of Government Financial Stabilization and Rehabilitation Policies.”

Its summary reads like a check list of emergency programs that are no longer needed now that the worst of the crisis is past. The insurance program for money market funds and the federal guarantee of qualifying bank debt can be tied directly to the fallout from Lehman’s spectacular end.

But last year’s turmoil didn’t begin and end with Lehman. Change the anniversary’s focus to, say, the government’s seizure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that occurred a week earlier, or to American International Group, just a day after, and it’s clear that some of the messier legacies of the credit crisis still haunt the current administration a year later.

The government arguably isn’t any closer to figuring out what to do with the two giant housing finance companies than the previous administration was on September 7, 2008, when it announced Fannie and Freddie would be put into conservatorship.

Today, nothing was mentioned about what to do with the companies — nationalize them, split them into a good bank/bad bank structure, or wind them down — even though the government’s stake in their business has increased substantially. As of the second quarter, the two companies have drawn down close to $100 billion from the government’s $400 billion preferred share equity lines.

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