President Obama nominated Representative Mel Watt (D–NC) as new chief regulator to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), replacing the current acting director Edward DeMarco. Watt has strong support from liberals in both the House and the Senate as a longtime member of the House Financial Services Committee and advocate …
The Obama Administration is reportedly pushing banks to increase mortgage lending to people with relatively weak credit in hopes of boosting home sales. But the very same policy under Presidents Clinton and Bush contributed mightily to the housing bubble that ultimately devastated millions of families in mortgage default. Credit is …
Bad ideas never seem to die. But the proposal to create a national infrastructure bank to federally fund transportation and infrastructure projects with taxpayer dollars is one such idea that President Obama and lawmakers in the 113th Congress should put to rest. A recent Politico article noted that the departure …
What would the potential impact on the economy be if Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—the housing finance government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs)—were eliminated? Our research indicates that winding down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from the mortgage market would have a minimal and predictable effect on the economy. Since 2008, Fannie Mae …
Followers of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have long joked that the fund’s acronym stands for “It’s Mostly Fiscal.” For a long time it has helped bail out basket-case economies with severe fiscal deficiencies, such as Greece, Russia, and Argentina. But a recent report shows that the IMF is now …
The now defunct Countrywide Financial Corp. issued hundreds of discounted loans to government officials and Fannie Mae employees in order to build clout with influential policymakers, a new House report shows. The report, issued by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, details several Countrywide VIP loans that were given …
House leaders have reportedly struck a deal to vote on reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank next week despite strident opposition from conservatives. Heritage’s Bryan Riley has called it the “Fannie Mae for exporters.” The Export-Import Bank provides taxpayer-subsidized loans to U.S. exporters. The bank’s charter will expire at the end …
To hear certain parts of the press tell it, the acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Ed DeMarco, announced that the agency is willing to consider wholesale write-downs of underwater mortgages in a recent speech on the subject. However, a closer reading of DeMarco’s speech and the …
The misguided federal policy to concentrate the U.S. mortgage finance industry in two huge government-sponsored entities was underscored again this morning when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged six former Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives with misleading investors and Congress about the amount of poor-credit-quality mortgages each entity …
