So it's now clear that I should add to the list of winners and losers I had imagined last month. As I had anticipated, those who owned the common and preferred stock are worse off -- Fannie and Freddie common shares lost half their value today in European trading today -- and those who shorted the common are better off. But there are other winners and losers from this plan including the following:

Winners

• Bill Gross. Gross runs PIMCO which owns $500 billion worth of MBS. Last week he was calling for the U.S. to spend $500 billion -- interesting coincidence -- to bail out the housing market.
• China's People's Bank. China's national bank owns $340 billion in MBS. The Treasury-led bailout will reduce some of the uncertainty in the value of its MBS holdings and those of Gross.
• Former Fannie/Freddie CEOs. Daniel Mudd and Richard Styron, ex-CEOs respectively of Fannie and Freddie have consulting contracts which will probably last until after November 4th -- following which they stand to receive $9.3 million and $14.1 million, respectively, in severance, according to the New York Times.
• Wall Street. By keeping Fannie and Freddie functioning, the government will likely restore the $1.5 billion worth of fees that used to flow to Wall Street for issuing their securities. The Times writes "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's business was worth $1.5 billion in fees in 2007, according to a Sanford C. Bernstein report. Through the first six months of this year, that figure sank to $600 million."

Losers

• American taxpayers. Taxpayers could lose up to $800 billion in this deal. So far the Treasury has refused to comment on how much this bailout will cost. So far, it looks like that cost could be $205 billion -- the $200 billion in senior preferred plus the $5 billion in MBS purchases -- but it is probably too early to tell.
• American homeowners. The bailout might indirectly lower mortgage rates slightly. But mortgage rates are not the problem with the housing market -- it's the 29% of mortgage-holders whose properties are worth less than the amount that they owe, three million foreclosures, and a 15% decline in home prices. By spending so much taxpayer's money without helping American homeowners, Treasury missed a chance to fix the fundamental problem.

This administration knows it's important to help out the biggest institutional investors -- after all they pay the bills on Wall Street. The middle class, not so much. Moreover, these weekend rescue package tend to excite investors. And global markets are celebrating in response to this one -- futures point to a recovery of 74% of the 345 Dow points lost in last Thursday's trading.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned.