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WASHINGTON — Fannie Mae's bookkeeping is drawing scrutiny from Wall Street again.

Three years after a accounting scandal that forced it to restate earnings by $6.3 billion, the giant, government-sponsored company that buys and sells home loans is on the defensive over a change in how it calculates potential losses from the growing mortgage crisis.

The fear among investors is that a new accounting method masks the number of bad loans held by Fannie, downplaying potential losses.

Shares of Fannie, the largest U.S. player in the market for mortgages packaged into tradable securities, tanked for the second straight day on Friday.

The stock fell $2.35, or 5.5 percent, to $40.69.

Fannie disclosed its new calculation for potential mortgage losses Nov. 9, when it submitted documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The bookkeeping change — and its potential impact — received significant attention on Thursday in an online article published by Fortune magazine.

Using the new method, Fannie reported a so-called "annualized credit-loss ratio" of 4 basis points for the first nine months of this year, meaning the value of four out of every 1,000 mortgages it owns declined during that period.

The Fortune article pointed out that under the old method, the credit-loss ratio for that period would have been 7.5 basis points — far exceeding Fannie's forecasts on the $2.4 trillion worth of mortgages it owns.