Freddie Mac CEO Donald Layton said in a phone interview with Inside The GSEs last week that the phrase “front-end risk sharing” is not well understood. He said almost all of the credit-risk transfer transactions can be referred to as front end because the terms are front end. “The risk-transfer mechanism is back end, the risk-transfer arrangement is front end,” he said. “If the loan comes to us and is put in one of our mortgage-backed securities, it is in fact a back-end risk transfer,” he said, explaining that if the loan goes bad the owner of the MBS takes the loss and looks to...