Outspoken congressman Barney Frank has no shortage of critics, and they're sure to be out in force today. This morning, The Wall Street Journal reported that the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, along with his colleague Anthony Weiner, is actually recommending that Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) relax their lending standards on condominiums.

The controversial request follows a decision by both Fannie and Freddie to tighten mortgage-lending standards for condos. In March, Fannie said it would no longer guarantee mortgages on condos in buildings where fewer than 70% of units have been rented, up from its previous benchmark of 51%. Freddie is due to implement similar measures in July. In a letter to the CEOs of both mortgage lenders, Reps. Frank and Weiner expressed their concerns that the higher standard "may be too onerous," and asked the lenders to "make appropriate adjustments" to their approach.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says we're trying to repeal what happened financially last year. Will it lead to strength industrially?

How low were we really? What was the real baseline pre-Lehman Brothers? What was going on in the country and the world before that financial atomic bomb dropped?

I struggle over that now, about what the true price of copper should be, about what the true price of oil should be, about the price of steel, all kinds of things. I try to figure out what the prices for everything were going to be before Lehman.

In celebration of Barry Ritholtz's critically-acclaimed new book Bailout Nation, he held The Big Picture Conference, which I was fortunate to attend.

Here are the main points from the most reputable speakers, Congressman Alan Grayson, Nassim Taleb, Doug Kass, and Josh Rosner.

Florida Congressman Alan Grayson discussed how systemic risk is an excuse for socialism and that interconnectedness is the main reason that these institutions are "too big to fail." In fact, these institutions no longer hold social or economic purpose, they are simply too big to exist.

Let's look at the numbers. Fannie Mae needs $19 billion. Match this against a loss of $23.2 billion and you have a net worth below zero.

That's not the end of it. Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM)is expected to need more money going forward, drawing on the government to supply the funds. Now some of this has been brought on by the government itself when it made Fannie program administrator for the government's housing market rescue.

Fannie suffered a net loss of $4.09 per share, which forced it to draw upon a $200 billion federal lifeline which was established for Fannie and Freddie.

The follically challenged Herb Allison is likely to take over from Neel Kashkari, the former Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE: GS) banker who brought his shiny pate to Congress to get kicked in another part of his anatomy as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) continued to frustrate almost everybody. If approved, Allison's formal title will be assistant secretary for the Office of Financial Stability which administers TARP. Under former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, TARP went from being a way to buy toxic assets to a source of capital for big banks -- whether they wanted it or not.

Now, Treasury Secretary Geithner wants to revive Paulson's original idea to the tune of a deeply flawed $1 trillion program to further enrich a handful of billionaire hedge fund and private equity honchos. And Geithner appears to have selected a very cold fish for that job -- former Merrill Lynch executive Allison -- a Yale philosophy major and Stanford MBA who lost out on the CEO's chair at Merrill Lynch a decade ago to the far more stock-broker-friendly David Komansky.

According to a report today in The Wall Street Journal [subscription required], Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) -- those twin titans of mortgage mayhem -- are planning to dish out $210 million worth of retention bonuses over the next 18 months. James Lockhart, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, explained that $51 million in payouts were distributed in late 2008, with the rest of the bonuses to be disbursed through 2009 and into early 2010.

The news is already raising politicians' ire, since Fannie and Freddie are staying afloat only through the grace of government bailouts. The two lenders reported combined losses of roughly $108 billion in 2008, says the Journal, yet 80% of Freddie's employees and 61% of Fannie's payroll will score retention bonuses based on this bleak operating performance.

$12.8 trillion of our money is going to bail out the bad bets of bankers, auto execs, and ordinary folks who took on mortgages they couldn't repay over the last 20 months. If you're among the 90% of the country that's been playing by the rules all these years, you may be wondering why that $12.8 trillion should come out of your pocket. After all, doesn't free markets mean that bettors get the pot when they win and pay the piper when they lose?

The "good" news is that of that $12.8 trillion, only a third -- or $4.2 trillion -- has actually been committed to a total of 34 distinct programs. The remaining $8.6 trillion is the limit of how much has been approved. And of that $12.8 trillion, 61% is under the control of the Fed in 20 programs, 16% is in the hands of the FDIC in 5 programs, another 21% will be spent by the Treasury in eight programs and the remaining two percent is being doled out by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in one program.

Here comes the next big rip off by the banks -- mortgage origination fees. Banks normally charge what is called an "origination fee" -- an upfront payment to the bank supposedly for the paper work involved in doing the paperwork.

Just to give you an example, David Rapport, professor at the University of California Medical School had to pay $3500.00 up front to refinance his mortgage. A year ago, there was no fee! So banks are jumping in the refinancing market and charging outrageous fees just for writing a mortgage. Don't tell me that last year there was no fee and now for some magical reason banks have to charge sky high fees. The mortgage Bankers Association boosted its forecast for 2009 home loan originations by $800 billion to $2.78 trillion. This will give you a sense of the size of the market.

There are very few people on this planet that can honestly say that they have not been affected in some way by the economic firestorm caused by underappreciating risk.

Congress, along with the Securities and Exchange Commission during a period where the White House was comatose, opened up the flood gates for Wall Street's financial wizards to bet the world and lose!

Who is ready for a second round of bonus outrage (dare I call it a "bonus" round)? This time it is Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) that has awarded retention bonuses to four of its top executives -- let's see how mad everyone gets about this one.

The mortgage company told the SEC in a recent filing that it is going to award bonuses between $470,000 to $611,000 to four of its top executives. As is the nature of a bonus, this payment is on top of the executives' already-hefty base pay.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says if you don't believe the administration's action (or inaction) here will have an effect, look at Lehman.

Every time I hear that policy doesn't matter, that rules don't matter, that nothing can be done, I think two words -- "Lehman Brothers." For those of you who think that it doesn't matter what government does, ask yourself whether you would feel the same way about the world today if Lehman Brothers had been bought by another bank, and we would not have had

1. tens of billions in bonds and preferreds destroyed,
2. the buck broken,
3. tens of billions in margin accounts that vaporized,
4. a fire sale of bad assets driving all prices down,
5. a sense of chaos as you knew the government had no plan, even after Bear, Fannie (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer's Take) and Freddie (NYSE: FRE) (Cramer's Take) and everything else that happened.

Most investors know about the United States' anti-state political culture: in America it's private sector solution first, public sector solution second.

And, most also know that what state that does exist is anti-central government: it dates back to our federalist origination. We're even reluctant to call something 'central' for this reason: we have a central bank, but it's called the Federal Reserve, not the Central Reserve. And it's the Internal Revenue Service, not the Central Revenue Service.

It's been exactly one year since the last time Warren Buffett showed off his incredible investment mind in his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK.A) shareholders and I dissected it for its greatest lessons.

You can read this year's entire 97-page annual report (pdf), or the shorter 23-page letter to shareholders (pdf), or just learn from what I think are some of this year's most important points:

1. While, as has been widely reported, this was Berkshire's worst year, we're only talking a 9.6% drop in book value, which hugely outperformed not only the S&P 500, but just about everyone else with multi-billion dollar businesses, let alone any insurance or investment businesses. Compare to Marsh & McLennan Companies (NYSE: MMC), Blackstone Group (NYSE: BX), Aon Corp (NYSE: AOC) and Willis Group (NYSE: WSH), all of which were hit far worse.

This port was written by Minyanville contributor Minyan Peter.

I think the Government will try at all costs to create the impression that only a limited number of banks are going to be nationalized. To achieve this, Secretary Geithner has requested that the top 15-20 banks in the country undergo a stress test, where regulators will review banks' capital positions under a variety of economic scenarios. And, based on these reviews, those banks that fail will be given convertible preferred stock to boost their capital levels to some yet to be determined level.

UBS AG (NYSE: UBS) missed analyst estimates when it reported Tuesday it lost a larger-than-expected 8.1 billion Swiss francs ($7.57 billion) in the fourth quarter. Estimates put the loss at 6.2 billion francs ($5.79 billion). It also announced it would cut another 2,000 jobs. Apparently, this could have been far worse as UBS benefited from an accounting adjustment. UBS shares gained nearly 7% in premarket trading as Switzerland's largest bank also reported an "encouraging" start to the year. UBS shares soared over 10% by 10 am.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) joined the last few financial institutions to move, cancel or change their meeting and conference plans. It has moved a three-day conference from the Las Vegas Strip to San Francisco as many scrutinize bank activities these days following them taking bailout funds. Still, according to anonymous sources, the cancellation itself will cost Goldman $600,000. GS shares opened lower.