That $5 billion figure is a bit low.  Remember that Freddie Mac had to make a $1.3 billion payment to the treasury for the original bailout.

Too big to fail:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Freddie Mac, the second largest provider of U.S. residential mortgage funding, on Friday posted a loss of $5 billion in the third quarter and predicted it would need more government support amid a “prolonged deterioration” in housing.

Increases in the value of securities Freddie Mac held over the period helped buoy its net worth, however, erasing its need to tap government funds for a second straight quarter to stay solvent while continuing to buy and guarantee home loans.

Including a $1.3 billion dividend payment on senior preferred stock bought by the Treasury in previous quarters, Freddie Mac’s third-quarter loss increases to $6.3 billion.

Remember that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have been in financial trouble because they were the instruments used by the federal government to encourage home ownership by making “easy money” loans available.  Lenders across the mortgage market were pressured or lured into making subprime mortgage loans to people with a low probability of paying them back by promises from the government that Fannie or Freddie would secure them.

This created a new market for what amounted to bad loans that many other lenders exploited.  And when Fannie and Freddie, which owned or secured 51% of the $12 trillion mortgage market at the time of the financial collapse, flopped it set off a domino effect across the lending industry.

And now we taxpayers are being forced to pay the piper for the collapse of the bad loans market the government created in the first place.

What’s more, the government continues to try and lure people into taking out more loans when, frankly, they’d be better served by slowing spending.

It’s fiscal madness.