Nobel Prize Winner Concludes Fannie & Freddie Pose Virtually No Risk to Federal Government The statistical probability of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac encountering an economic shock as severe as the one envisioned by their current risk-based capital standard is “substantially less than one in 500,000 – and may be smaller than one in three million,” according to a new analysis conducted by one of last year’s winners of the Nobel Prize for economics.