Taxpayer risk for Freddie and Fannie?

How much do you have?

A proposal outlined by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson - if approved by Congress - would offer explicit backing for the two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). It has three main elements.

* Increase each company's $2.25 billion line of credit with the Treasury by an unlimited amount for the next 18 months.
* Let the Treasury have the option of buying an unlimited amount of Fannie and Freddie stock over the next 18 months.
* Give the Federal Reserve a consultative role with the GSEs' regulator to assess the companies' capital requirements.

In any rescue, Treasury would likely have to borrow billions of dollars. Exactly how much it would cost taxpayers is impossible to gauge because of several unknowns. Among them are extreme volatility in the companies' stock prices coupled with falling home values and rising mortgage default rates, which affect the value of the GSEs' assets and debt.