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A U.S. Postal Service operative walks in the snow in Rensselaer, N.Y., on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2010. Areas of upstate New York believed several inches of snow, and more is expected through Wednesday.

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(02-28) 08:56 PST Portland, Maine (AP) –

More than 250,000 homes and avocation are still without power as restoration efforts continue days after a slack-moving storm battered the Northeast with heavy snow, rain and tall winds.

More than a million utility customers throughout the region not to be found power at the peak of the storm. Nearly 100,000 profit customers still lacked electricity in New Hampshire, the hardest-hit position. New York had about 96,000 outages and Maine 36,000.

Smaller outage verse were reported in other states as hundreds of utility crews continued removing trees that knocked on the ground power lines and replacing utility poles that snapped during the hurricane that crossed the region Thursday and Friday.

Jessica Pons / The Chronicle

Fernando Curiel, 20, works on the puppet “La Llorona” (left), a woman weeping for students. It is one of four in-your-face props, including a skeleton wearing a graduation cap, being created for Thursday’s protests.

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March 4th has gone viral.

The upcoming Day of Action to Defend Public Education – rallies, marches, teach-ins, even political theater – began as an idea on the UC Berkeley campus last fall and has caught fire up and down California, from elementary school to graduate school, and across two dozen states.

On the surface, Thursday’s Day of Action seems likely to be an unprecedented show of unity among public education advocates at all levels who are angry that politicians and university officials with fingers on purse strings are letting the system decay.

“Everybody’s coming together,” said Callie Maidhof, a student at UC Berkeley, where students have protested tuition hikes, budget cuts and layoffs since last fall.

But some say the event is already scorched by the threat of violence. At an outdoor dance party early Friday, a crowd of Berkeley campus protesters seized a building, torched trash cans, threw bottles and got into an angry confrontation with police.

Hostilities unwanted

Students said protesters occupied the building in part to call attention to March 4th, and don’t expect the hostilities to be repeated Thursday.

“It’s important not to inject that level of damage into every action, or you’ll alienate lots of people who don’t want to act that way,” said Xander Lenc, a student at the dance party that got out of hand.

A major goal of Thursday’s Day of Action is to draw attention to education woes not only in California, but all over the country, Maidhof said. “We want public education to be open and free to all.”

Instead, college tuition has been climbing steadily in most states and in California, despite a state master plan calling for tuition-free colleges.

At UC, next year’s base tuition of $10,302 will be more than double that of six years ago. Recent tuition hikes of more than 30 percent at UC and at California State University have forced students to shoulder more of the cost of their education as state lawmakers have cut back on funding to the universities in response to the state’s epic budget crisis. Schools are offering fewer courses, cutting wages, laying off employees and reducing enrollment.

At community colleges, course cuts will close the door to 21,000 students next year.

In the lower grades, thousands of teachers will get layoff warnings by March 15. Holding the Day of Action in time to highlight those pink slips is one reason students and teachers say they chose the date March 4.

“We hope to educate our politicians that the system they have for funding schools is not equitable and needs to be changed,” said Megan Caluza, who has taught special-needs students at El Dorado Elementary in San Francisco for two years and expects to be laid off.

She’ll march with colleagues and parents through the Mission District after school, then head to a 5 p.m. rally at Civic Center – one of many sponsored by labor unions and faculty.

“Everyone agrees that education should be a right, not a privilege,” said Joan Berezin, co-chairwoman of the social science department at Berkeley City College and an organizer. “This is our state, our education. If we don’t defend it, who will?”

All 23 campuses of California State University are holding events.

A sense of humor

Rachel Kerns, a sophomore at San Francisco State, recently put final touches on a 12-foot papier-mache “Draculator.” It’s one of four huge, in-your-face puppets that students, theater Professor Carlos Barуn and artist Colette Crutcher are creating for Thursday’s rally.

The group is building a traditional Mexican weeping figure called “La Llorona” to cry for students, dinosaur bones to signify the extinction of education, and a huge skeleton in a graduation cap.

“It’s a student who’s still paying college loans even after he’s dead,” Crutcher said with a laugh.

“March 4th, I hope, will give the students a feeling of accomplishment,” Barуn said. “If we make noise, and if we’re heard – if people laugh at our work – then we’ll have achieved something very positive. We’re not there to scream at people.”

March 4th was born on Oct. 24, when hundreds of students and employees from dozens of schools met at UC Berkeley to decide how to keep momentum alive after a major statewide campus walkout a month earlier to protest the fee hikes and cuts in the works.

Since then it seems everyone is planning something for that day.

“We wanted to get involved with the national call by California students who are facing the same crisis as we are,” said Chris Persampieri, a student at Massasoit Community College in Brockton, Mass., one of several schools in dozens of states holding rallies.

Will it make a difference?

“I don’t think March 4th is going to do anything,” said UC Berkeley student Yana Pavlova. “We don’t have the tangible power to change the law. So at the end of the day, we’re back where we started, paying $30,000 for a ‘public’ education.”

A Day of Action: Events planned in the Bay Area and Sacramento. C3

A Day of Action to Defend Public Education

Events planned Thursday in the Bay Area and Sacramento:

Sacramento

– 11 a.m.-1 p.m.: State Capitol rally on the north steps. The purpose is to feature lessons on California’s public education system, focusing on history, political science and economics. Speakers include Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico, D-Fremont, and UC Berkeley Professor George Lakoff.

– Two-minute testimonials from faculty, alumni and public college students will follow.

San Francisco

– Daylong: San Francisco public schools will host teach-ins, marches, rallies and letter writing starting at 7 a.m. Many will host rallies and marches, including El Dorado Elementary from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m.; George Washington High from 11:20 a.m. to noon; Feinstein Elementary at 1 p.m.; and Miraloma Elementary at 2:15 p.m.

– 7 a.m.: San Francisco State University campus action.

– 3 p.m.: March from 24th and Mission streets to Civic Center.

– 4 p.m.: March to State Building on McAllister Street.

– 5 p.m.: “Rally for Our Future” at Civic Center, with speakers and performances.

Oakland

– Daylong: Oakland public schools will offer activities highlighting the impact of school funding cuts. Activities include leafleting and picketing before class.

– 11 a.m.: Laney College rally, followed by march (via Fruitvale BART) to Oakland City Hall.

– Noon-4 p.m.: Rally at Frank Ogawa Plaza (in front of Oakland City Hall, 14th and Broadway).

– 4 p.m.: Oakland school officials hold press conference at 1515 Clay St.

UC Berkeley

– 7 a.m.-noon: Pickets on campus.

– Noon-1 p.m.: UC Berkeley rally at Bancroft and Telegraph, followed by a march to Oakland City Hall.

Cal State East Bay, Hayward

– Noon: Rally, walkout and open mike/speak out at Agora Stage at noon; delivery of student demands to campus president.

California Maritime Academy, Vallejo

– Noon: Street Theatre/Mock Die-In at Maritime’s main quad.

San Jose State

– 11 a.m.: March from San Jose City Hall to San Jose State Tower Lawn.

– Noon: Keep the Doors Open rally at San Jose State Tower Lawn

Sonoma State

– 11:30 a.m.: Student walkout

– Noon-1:30 p.m.: Rally near Stevenson Quad

E-mail Nanette Asimov at nasimov@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page C – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

(02-25) 16:39 PST BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) –

European Union premises privacy regulators are telling Google Inc. to warn people before it sends cameras aloud into cities to take pictures for its Street View maps, adding to the gang’s legal worries in Europe.

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Google should shorten the time it keeps the ab~ photos from one year to six months, regulators also said in a alphabetic character to the company obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday.

In a description, Google said its need to retain Street View images for individual year is “legitimate and justified.”

The company, based in Mountain View, Calif., before-mentioned it also already posts notifications on its Web site about in which place its Street View cameras are clicking. The alert system on Thursday indicated Google’s likeness-taking vehicles have been cruising the streets of Cagiliari, Italy, Nantes, France and as luck may have it other nearby cities.

Street View launched in the U.S. in 2007 and a little while ago adds photos of real-life street scenes to Google’s maps of on every side of 100 cities worldwide. To soothe privacy concerns, it uses special software to dim pictures of faces and car license plates.

Google has been moderate to roll out the service in Europe after governments raised concerns that attractive pictures of people in public places could break some EU rules ~ward personal privacy.

Greece told the company last year to halt plans to gingerbread the nation’s streets until more privacy safeguards are provided and in April, residents of some English village formed a human chain to stop a camera van.

Google has also bowed to German demands to erase the inexperienced footage of faces, house numbers, license plates and individuals who get told authorities they do not want their information used in the profit.

EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said that Europe had “high standards as being data protection” and that she expected that “all companies play according to the rules of the fearless.”

The head of EU data protection agencies, Alex Turk, told Google’s premises privacy chief Peter Fleischer in a letter dated Feb. 11 that the set should always give advance notice on its Web site and in the local or national press before it takes pictures.

It should take care to elude taking pictures “of a sensitive nature and those containing intimate minutiae not normally observable by a passer-by,” Turk said.

He in addition said that the company should revise its “disproportionate” policy of charge the original unblurred images for up to a year, saying improvements in Google’s blurring technology and advantage public awareness would lead to fewer complaints — and a shorter hinder for people to react to the photos they see on the locality.

Complaints about the images put online would usually be checked in opposition to the original photos.

The data privacy warning comes a day rear an Italian court convicted three Google executives — including Fleischer — of seclusion violations because they did not act quickly enough to remove every online video that showed sadistic teen bullies mocking and hitting one autistic boy.

Google said it would appeal the case, claiming it attacked exemption from restraint. of speech on the Internet.

Also Wednesday, EU antitrust authorities afore~ that Google’s rivals have complained that it demotes their sites in the rankings it uses in successi~ its search engine, the world’s most popular. The EU afore~ it was not opening an antitrust case — and Google related it had done nothing wrong.

__

AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke contributed to this detonation from San Francisco.

(02-21) 14:58 PST San Rafael, Calif. (AP) –

A 26-year-old San Francisco man is suddenly the owner of luxurious $2 million Marin County home after his ticket was pulled in a community raffle.

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Officials with Community Action Marin, a nonprofit social service group, say Tommy Toy’s raffle number was drawn during a gathering at the group’s office in San Rafael Saturday.

Toy, who works as a smog check technician, was notified by phone.

He says he hasn’t decided whether he will keep the house, a new 3,200-square-foot home overlooking San Francisco Bay in Larkspur, or take the optional cash prize of $1.6 million.

During the drawing, there were additional winners of 300 smaller prizes ranging in value from $300 to $25,000.

Community Action Marin uses the money it collects in the raffle to help poor and disadvantaged people in Marin County.

___

Information from: Marin Independent Journal, www.marinij.com

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Tuesday that she will not run for California governor this year, removing any doubt that Attorney General Jerry Brown will be the party’s nominee.

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Feinstein, the 76-year-old former San Francisco mayor who is one of the state’s most popular politicians, called Brown Tuesday morning to tell him she would not be running, her spokesman Gil Duran confirmed.

“She is a trusted friend and close adviser to the attorney general,” Brown spokesman Scott Glazer said. “He looks forward to working with her on the huge challenges facing California.”

Pressed for months to decide whether she would jump into the race, Feinstein said she wouldn’t unless other candidates failed to address California’s chronic budget problems.

Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, was the Democratic nominee for governor in 1990 but lost to Republican Pete Wilson.

“The fact that there is a very strong candidate in Jerry Brown, who should be announcing any day and who has a clear shot, is a very good thing for Democrats,” said Democratic consultant Gale Kaufman.

Barring “a protest candidate from the left,” said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, “it looks like a pretty clear field for Jerry Brown.”

Not facing Feinstein could be good news for GOP gubernatorial hopefuls Meg Whitman, the former eBay CEO, and Steve Poizner, the state insurance commissioner.

“Beating Jerry Brown is going to be an uphill fight for either of the Republicans,” said Schnur. “But beating Dianne Feinstein would have been a bigger uphill climb.”

After calling Brown, Feinstein announced her decision to two dozen Democratic donors at an Orange County fundraiser.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who dropped out of the governor’s race last year after falling behind Brown in fundraising, said Feinstein “would likely have been elected governor but we have to respect her decision.”

“Given the state’s many financial and other challenges, she can do as much or more for California from her powerful position in the U.S. Senate than from Sacramento right now,” Newsom said.

E-mail the writers at jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com and cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A – 12 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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(02-05) 06:25 PST WASHINGTON (AP) –

The unemployment rate dropped unexpectedly in January to 9.7 percent, while employers shed 20,000 jobs, according to a report that offered hope the economy will add jobs soon.

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The unemployment rate dropped from 10 percent because a survey of households found the number of employed Americans rose by 541,000, the Labor Department said Friday. The job losses are calculated from a separate survey of employers.

Excluding the beleagured construction industry, which shed 75,000 jobs, the private sector added 63,000 positions.

The unemployment rate fell to its lowest level since August. John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo, said the decline wasn’t a result of a shrinking labor force, which has held the rate down in previous months.

“It simply was, people found jobs,” he said. The report is “consistent with continued improvement in the labor market.”

The department also revised its past employment estimates to show that job losses from the Great Recession have been much worse than previously stated. The economy has shed 8.4 million jobs since the downturn began in December 2007, up from a previous figure of 7.2 million.

That’s the most jobs lost in any recession, as a percent of total employment, since World War II.

The figure for November was revised higher, however, to show a gain of 64,000 jobs. That was initially reported as a gain of 4,000.

Much of January’s report offers hope that employers are starting to reverse course and may start adding jobs soon. Aside from November’s gain, January’s job losses were the smallest since the recession began and are down from the huge loss of 779,000 jobs in January 2009.

The manufacturing sector added jobs for the first time since January 2007. Its gain of 11,000 jobs was the most since April 2006.

Retailers added 42,100 jobs, the most since November 2007, before the recession began. Temporary help services gained 52,000 jobs, its fourth month of gains. That could signal future hiring, as employers usually hire temp workers before permanent ones.

The average work week increased to 33.3 hours, from 33.2. That indicates employers are increasing hours for their current workers, a step that usually precedes new hiring.

The number of part-time workers who want full-time work, but can’t find it, fell by almost 1 million. That lowered the “underemployment” rate, which also includes discouraged workers, to 16.5 percent from 17.3 percent.

The federal government has begun hiring workers to perform the 2010 census, which added 9,000 jobs. That process could add as many as 1.2 million jobs this year, though they will all be temporary.

But job cuts at the state and local levels canceled out those gains, as government employment fell by 8,000.

Most of the 75,000 jobs lost in the construction industry came from the commercial building sector, the department said. Construction lost more jobs than other sector.

Still, jobs remain scarce even as the economy is recovering: Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation’s output, has risen for two straight quarters. GDP rose by 5.7 percent in the October-December quarter, the fastest pace in six years.

Many economists say businesses are reluctant to add workers because it’s not clear whether the recovery will continue once government stimulus measures, such as tax credits for home buyers, fade this spring.

The debate over health care reform and the scheduled expiration of some Bush administration tax cuts at the end of this year may also hold back some employers, many economists said.

“Until some of these uncertainties from Washington get cleared up, businesses, particularly small businesses, are going to be loath to do any additional hiring,” said Hank Smith, chief investment officer at Haverford Investments.

High unemployment could restrain consumer spending, which has led most recoveries in the past. That’s why many economists think the current rebound will be weak.

Public concern about persistent unemployment has forced President Barack Obama and members of Congress to shift their attention to jobs and the economy and away from health care reform. The Senate will begin working Monday on legislation that would give companies a tax break for hiring new workers, Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday.

The budget plan Obama released this week projects unemployment will still be very high — 9.8 percent — by the end of this year.

Mike Groll / AP

A U.S. Postal Service artisan walks in the snow in Rensselaer, N.Y., on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2010. Areas of upstate New York received several inches of snow, and more is expected through Wednesday.

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(02-28) 01:06 PST Concord, N.H. (AP) –

Frustration turned to sufferance Saturday for hundreds of thousands of people in the Northeast struggling to continue to live another day waiting for utility crews to restore electricity after mighty storms socked the region with heavy snow, rain and hurricane-power winds.

The region was left to deal with the fallout of gusting winds that created hard upon-blizzard conditions this week in what was the third strong disturbance this month for some areas. Parts of New York got greater quantity than 2 feet of snow while some areas of coastal New England were drenched with flooding rains.

One man was killed by a falling snow-laden tree department in Central Park in New York City, and two people in Candia, N.H., died in a family fire caused by improperly using a propane heater to stay glowing, fire officials said.

The highest wind reported from the storm was 91 mph on the farther side the coast of Portsmouth, N.H. — well above hurricane agency of 74 mph. Gusts also hit 60 mph or more from the mountains of West Virginia to New York’s Long Island and Massachusetts.

Frustration was inception to show on Charlotte Letteney’s face Saturday at Concord High School, individual of 24 shelters in New Hampshire. Letteney, 64, of Allenstown, arrived Friday obscurity with her 66-year-old husband, who is a paraplegic, two granddaughters, her grandson-in-law and 6-month-old great-grandson.

The parents and children left their mobile home when the temperature dropped to 46 degrees and Letteney’s hands had gone be~, leaving behind four parrots in covered cages and a couple of days’ cost of food for their dog, Bosco. They have no car — a city van brought them to the shelter — and no way to learn home to feed the animals or to let the dog gone ~.

“He’ll go out in the kitchen, and I’ll require to sterilize my floor,” Letteney said.

The Letteneys are among besides than 1 million customers across the Northeast who lost power as of the storm, and as of Saturday afternoon more than moiety of them were still without electricity. New Hampshire’s electrical grid was the hardest be suitable to, with more than a quarter-million customers still without power. New York had else than 160,000 outages and Maine about 67,000.

Some residents were warned they’ll exist without electricity for up to a week, as uprooted trees and fallen benefit poles hindered utility crews.

Bow, N.H., Assistant Fire Chief Dick Pistey compared the station two years ago during a powerful ice storm when ice without delay coated trees, bringing down tree limbs and power lines, leaving millions free from power — some for two weeks.

“It’s deja vu quite over again,” Pistey said.

In Londonderry, N.H., Irene Stanley, 68, was sitting in a rocking chair next to a wood stove to preserve warm, her royal blue beta fish in its container nearby. Stanley, who managed in the absence of power for nearly two weeks during the ice storm two years ago, said her mission for the day was to buy batteries to restrain her radio operating.

In York, Maine, 70-year-old lobsterman Pat White, was quick to use his generator to help cook a pancake breakfast Saturday to sustain life his neighbors who were without power — a father, his daughter and her infant.. White and his wife, Enid, were planning what to serve them despite dinner.

“We’ve got to use up some of the substance in the refrigerator,” he said.

Nick Vermette, 49, a safety specialist for Central Maine Power, the state’s largest utility, was supervising crews restoring fleet in Portland on Saturday. He said the 17-hour days are exhausting.

“By the time you guide home take a shower, try to get to sleep, get up and tend hitherward back, you’re averaging four to five hours sleep,” he reported.

___

Associated Press Writer Kathy McCormack contributed to this report.

Mayor Gavin Newsom had been reluctant to push a sit/lie ordinance, telling The Chronicle editorial board earlier this month it was just too divisive to support.

C.W. Nevius

Walk on Haight converts Newsom to sit/lie 02.27.10

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Then he took his 5 1/2-month-old daughter for a stroll on Haight Street one Saturday morning.

“As God is my witness, there’s a guy on the sidewalk smoking crack,” Newsom said.

Suddenly, the issue became more personal. On Friday, Newsom revealed that he will introduce a sit/lie ordinance to the Board of Supervisors next week.

Get ready for predictions of the end of the world as we know it. The ordinance will give police officers the ability to order abusive sidewalk squatters to move away from homes and stores. But homeless advocates are likely to paint it as an effort to criminalize homelessness and round up and arrest the poor and disadvantaged.

They’ve demonized laws like this with success before, which was one reason Newsom didn’t want to “get caught up in the sideshow,” as he said at the ed-board meeting. But he is convinced he can make the case that this is about inappropriate behavior. “I cannot impress on you more, this is not a homeless issue,” Newsom said. “I am living here, I am taking these walks with my family, and I’m amazed that these people have put up with this for decades.”

While we are at it, let’s give credit to the neighbors and merchants of the Haight. For all the talk about how nothing ever gets done in the city – either important issues are talked to death or they are watered down to the point of being worthless – the residents of Newsom’s new neighborhood put on a clinic for getting things done.

With the help of community organizations like the Haight Ashbury Improvement Association, the residents have pushed the sit/lie debate. And this week they followed that up with an innovative plan to subsidize the cost of installing video cameras at local stores. Instead of the useless and over-priced crime cameras the city has installed; the private $300 video cameras will give police clear, useful images.

All of that was done with effective grassroots organizing. Kent Uyehara, merchant chair for the association, says efforts to organize locals used to be met with indifference.

“They’d say, ‘I’ve been here 27 years. We tried that before and it didn’t work. Why would you think it would work now?’ ” Uyehara says.

There are several reasons. For starters, new Police Chief George Gascуn has proved to be an effective advocate for new ideas. He got behind the sit/lie ordinance, allowing the Haight’s police captain, Teresa Barrett, to recommend the idea at neighborhood meetings.

When critics complained that current laws could accomplish the same goals as sit/lie, Barrett pointed out that San Francisco police cannot legally require people who are blocking sidewalks to move unless they have a formal complaint from a citizen. That leaves the person making the complaint open to retaliation.

With the police backing the issue, the neighborhood rallied.

“In the last three weeks, I have seen more merchants wanting to get involved than in the 15 years I have been here,” Uyehara said.

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who represents the area, has waffled on the issue. But he began to hear a steady drumbeat of support for sit/lie. Mirkarimi is holding a hearing on the matter at Monday’s 10 a.m. Public Safety Committee. Expect some lively debate, especially now that the mayor has taken a stand.

Frankly, the ordinance is probably a longshot to pass at the board and is likely to end up on the November ballot.

So won’t Newsom have to stay in the mayor’s office to shepherd the legislation through? Surely he won’t want to leave for the lieutenant governor’s office knowing that he’d have to turn his sit/lie ordinance over to an interim mayor elected by the Board of Supervisors.

“Oh I’m sure Mayor (Aaron) Peskin can handle it,” Newsom said.

He was joking.

I think.

C.W. Nevius’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. E-mail him at cwnevius@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page C – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

(02-24) 11:07 PST WASHINGTON (AP) –

Freddie Mac lost almost $26 billion last year, ominous news for taxpayers who are footing the bill to rescue the mortgage finance company and its sibling Fannie Mae.

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Freddie Mac, which has lost a total of almost $80 billion since the housing crisis started in 2007, is bracing for more pain. The McLean, Va.-based company said a record 4 percent of its borrowers are at least three months behind on their payments and facing foreclosure.

Its chief executive, Charles Haldeman, warned Wednesday of a “potential large wave of foreclosures” still to come.

This is a major problem for the federal government, which seized control of Freddie and Fannie in September 2008. The two companies have already siphoned $111 billion from the government to stay afloat. That number is expected to hit $188 billion by fall 2011.

And while Freddie Mac didn’t ask for any more bailout money last quarter, the company said it will likely need more financial aid and might never repay it.

“We now have unlimited taxpayer exposure to the bailout of Fannie and Freddie, a bailout nation where the big get bigger, the small get smaller and the taxpayer gets poorer,” Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, said at a House hearing Wednesday.

Fannie and Freddie dominate the mortgage market, backing about 70 percent of the loans made last year. The two companies purchase mortgages from lenders and package them into securities. Investors are willing to buy the securities because they are effectively guaranteed by the U.S. government. That puts American taxpayers at risk.

But the fragile housing sector is so dependent on the government that officials say they won’t have a detailed exit strategy until next year. Underscoring the market’s weakness, the Commerce Department said Wednesday that sales of new homes unexpectedly plunged 11 percent from December to January to the lowest level on record.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told lawmakers Wednesday that the Obama administration will “make sure we bring about fundamental change in the housing market and get ourselves in a position where the government is playing a less risky, but more constructive role in supporting housing markets in the future.”

Separately, Freddie Mac warned there is “significant uncertainty as to whether or when we will emerge” from government control.

For taxpayers, stabilizing Freddie and Fannie Mae has been one of the costliest consequences of the financial meltdown. Freddie Mac has received about $51 billion from Treasury to date, and the Obama administration has pledged to cover unlimited losses through 2012.

Freddie Mac said Wednesday it lost $25.7 billion, or $7.89 a share, for all of 2009. Of those losses, $4.1 billion went to dividends paid to the Treasury Department, which holds a nearly 80 percent stake in the company.

In the final three months of last year, Freddie Mac posted a loss of $7.8 billion, or $2.39 a share. The results, however, were a marked improvement over the fourth quarter 2008 when Freddie lost $23.9 billion, or $7.37 a share.

During the most recent quarter, Freddie suffered $7.1 billion in credit losses and a $3.4 billion write-down in low income tax credit investments. Also Wednesday Fannie Mae said in a regulatory filing that it plans to take a $5 billion charge when it reports its fourth quarter results later this week.