Introduction

My name is Amy Anderson. I am a married woman (15 years as of last May) with an elementary aged child. As of tomorrow (or today, rather being that it is almost 4 a.m. on Friday, December 5th) I will no longer be a Fannie Mae employee.

On October 3rd of 2005 I began my tenure at Fannie Mae. I was, actually, quite terrified as I had never really worked for a large corporation before. I was hired as an Administrative Associate working with the Housing and Community Development (HCD) business at Fannie Mae. I was to learn a great deal from the people that I supported there. I made good friends, important connections and will always remember the passion of the mission that those that work within HCD have for the Charter of Fannie Mae.

The purpose of Fannie Mae is to provide liquidity to the markets so that banks can lend money to people who want to purchase homes. We're kind of like the Fed like that - however, it is important to understand that Fannie doesn't originate mortgages - oh no, Fannie Mae, and it's competitor Freddie Mac, operate in the secondary markets. This means that when banks lend money to consumers as a mortgage, Fannie and Freddie purchase those mortgages which allow the banks to get more cash so that they can then turn around and provide more money to those who want to buy a house.

So - I worked in Investor Relations. It was an awesome job. I mean, I got to see Fannie Mae and learn about all of the businesses from the top down. Investor Relations may have been under the auspices of Finance, but in truth it worked with the core of Senior Management. We worked with marketing the releases of new stock (usually preferred but sometimes common) with the understanding that this was to raise capital to support our business. Some folks chose to market our preferreds as "safe" but in fact, preferred stock holds all the same risks as common stock - just in a different way, but again - that would be for a different blog topic.

I loved my job - I learned so much and I will miss this so very much.

On September 6th, the government placed Fannie Mae and it's competitor and fellow GSE, Freddie Mac, under conservatorship. Our conservator, FHFA or the Federal Housing Finance Act holds all responsibilities now for the failure or success of Fannie Mae. We'll see what happens. However, when Fannie Mae went into conservatorship - our #1 stockholder became the government. This meant that Investor Relations, Equity, as it stood was extraneous. We would become no longer necessary to the businesses that are all a part of Fannie Mae.

Tomorrow/today is my last day at Fannie Mae. I can't sleep though I'm exhausted. I have an ulcer and it's driving me insane - we're out of milk. So tomorrow, I and my fellow IR employees will head out into the great unknown and learn what life is like after Fannie Mae.

Until then...