Fannie Mae was placed into federal conservatorship in September 2008 along with Freddie Mac.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency took control of both government-sponsored enterprises on September 7, 2008. The intervention followed heavy losses linked to the collapse of the U.S. housing market and the deterioration of mortgage-backed assets.
Fannie Mae’s formal name is the Federal National Mortgage Association. It buys or guarantees mortgages and helps provide liquidity to the U.S. housing-finance system. Freddie Mac, formally the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, performs a similar broad function.
Conservatorship was not the same as ordinary bankruptcy. The government sought to stabilize the companies and maintain mortgage-market operations. Their rescue became one of the major institutional responses to the global financial crisis.