GSEs' Focus Should be on Credit Access, Honest Stress Test
September 16, 2016
Talk of housing finance reform is just a “solution in search of a problem,” according to one housing expert. Tim Howard, former senior executive at Fannie Mae for more than 20 years, said that with the GSEs’ loans performing well, the argument for replacing them is becoming harder to make. “It is no longer credible to claim that replacing Fannie and Freddie with an untested alternative, forcing them to do mandatory risk sharing or requiring them to hold bank-like levels of capital could possibly fix what now ails the U.S. residential mortgage market,” said Howard. He said the small size of the credit box is one of the primary problems that needs to be addressed, explaining that...