From Bloomberg:

Freddie Mac, the U.S. mortgage-finance company hobbled by record foreclosures, slashed its dividend at least 80 percent after posting a quarterly loss that was three times wider than analysts’ estimates.

Freddie dropped 19 percent in New York trading and the larger Fannie Mae declined 15 percent on mounting concern that the government-chartered companies will sacrifice shareholders to bolster capital. Freddie doubled its reserves for future home- loan losses to $2.8 billion, a sign that Chief Executive Officer Richard Syron sees no end in sight to the worst housing slump since the Great Depression.

The results, combined with Syron’s delay in selling $5.5 billion in stock, increased speculation U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson will use his new power to pump money into Freddie. Syron said the McLean, Virginia-based company will wait to sell shares at “a more propitious time.” Meantime the company may slow purchases for its $792 billion portfolio of mortgages and slice the dividend to avoid breaching regulatory capital requirements.

and:

The company has 22,000 properties in foreclosure, the most since it was created in 1970 during the Vietnam War and now anticipates losing 26 percent on each loan, up from 22 percent. The fair value of its assets fell to a negative $5.6 billion.

“Neither we nor anyone else can predict when the housing market will recover and it would be folly for anyone to try to do so,” Syron, 64, said on a conference call with analysts today. “There’s still a large amount of inventory to work through the system and record foreclosures continue to be the problem, pushing results down further.”

Ouch. Look for the US taxpayers to be on the hook for this one.