Washington  - US mortgage giant Fannie Mae reported a 25.2- billion-dollar quarterly loss on Thursday and asked the government for cash to keep it afloat.

Fannie Mae asked for a 15.2-billion-dollar capital infusion from the US Treasury and said it could need more if the housing and credit markets continue to worsen.

It was the sixth-straight quarterly loss for the lender that was taken over by the government last year. Losses for the year came to 58.7 billion dollars.

In 2007, Fannie Mae had 3.6 billion dollars in fourth quarter losses and yearly earnings of 2.1 billion dollars.

The company had said last month it would seek the cash infusion in its first withdrawal under a programme established last year to keep it and its sibling Freddie Mac afloat.

Treasury officials have pledged up to 100 billion dollars each for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Both are government-chartered firms which finance or buy half of all the nation's mortgages, estimated at 12 trillion dollars.

In September, the US government seized control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and replaced their executives as the US financial crisis came to a head. It also set up a fund to keep the mortgage giants solvent and has since provided bail-outs to some of the country's largest financial firms and automakers.

The US mortgage crisis spurred by sub-prime loans to borrowers with poor credit is blamed for sending the country's financial institutions into a tailspin which then drove the economy into a recession. (dpa)