Freddie Mac plunged 48 percent to 4.10 dollars at the Wall Street open following a 22 percent slide on Thursday and Fannie Mae lost 46 percent to 7.07 dollars after a 14 percent drop in the prior session.

The latest action came amid a new report saying the government could put the finance giants in receivership, which would make the shares worthless.

The shares of the two firms have lost over 80 percent since the start of the year.

The New York Times said the administration of President George W. Bush is weighing the possibility of having to place one or both companies in a conservatorship to protect them from the snowballing collapse of the US mortgage finance market.

The Wall Street Journal, which first reported Thursday that the Bush administration was weighing strategies to keep the firms afloat, said Friday that pressure was on them now to raise fresh capital.

Under a 1992 law, if either is seen as being severely undercapitalized, it would have to be placed into government conservatorship.

One research note this week said the two firms may have to raise tens of billions of dollars in fresh capital under new accounting rules to offset massive losses in their home loan portfolios.

The two firms, which have no explicit government backing despite their government charter, provide liquidity to the housing market by buying mortgages and repackaging them into securities sold to investors.

Freddie Mac has a loan portfolio of 1.5 trillion dollars and Fannie Mae's is over 700 billion. Together they own or guarantee some 5.2 trillion dollars in loans, or about 40 percent of the total value of home loans in the United States.

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