Which of the following is Least likely a US Govt sponsored enterprise that issues mortgage backed securities? 1)Freddie mac 2)Ginnie Mae 3)Farmer mac The answer in the Elan Mock is 2) Ginnie Mae The explanation was that Ginnie Mae is a federally related institustion Can someone please explain ? and what is Farmer MAc ??!?!?!?!?
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1124633720100311 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government-sponsored_enterprise Its a GSE. I thought there was no need to memorize them… 
Anyways…
Yeah you would expect the CFAI to ask better questions that that. But there are always a few pathetic questions like this one on the exam. I think in Dec there was one on the Spearman rank correlation coefficient (non-parametric test).
The deal is that Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Farmer Mac etc are government sponsored entities in that they are public corporations with stock and the ability to issue bonds (which Ginnie can’t do) and have an implicit backing of the US Government. Ginnie Mae is not a government sponsored entity, it is a government AGENCY. Ginnie Mae is directly backed by the US Government and is not allowed to issue traditional bonds and stock (just MBS’s) because this would basically be the US Government competing with itself. Farmer Mac is just like Freddie or Fannie. It buys agricultural loans to provide liquidity and lower interest rates for farm lending. This actually isn’t that much of a BS question to me. The problem is so many sources and textbooks do such a terrible job of differentiating between a GSE (defined broadly as publicly owned and traded) and an agency (a direct arm of the US Government).