“Watt will want to draw a line of demarcation between him and DeMarco,” said one source. “Going forward, I think we’ll see an emphasis on average credit scores funded and even servicing performance.”
One ad on the radio sounds like The 60 Plus Association is doing the Lord’s work for the pension funds of fire fighters and policemen. After all, public pensions owned GSE stock prior to the crash and lost a bundle.
Mounting opposition from both the left and the right, a month-long wait to mark-up and newly filed competing legislation in the House could doom the already tenuous effort by two senior senators to move a GSE reform bill this year, say industry observers.Given the need for speed and a closing legislative window, last week’s announcement by Sens. Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Mike Crapo, R-ID, that the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee would mark up their housing finance reform package on April 29 – well over a month after the bill’s initial March 16 rollout – is not seen as a good sign.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency has sent a draft 2014 Conservatorship Scorecard to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for review, but it remains unclear how different it will be from the GSE goals the FHFA set for last year. According to industry officials who have been briefed on the matter, the scorecard will likely be released by month’s end. The scorecard was the brainchild of former FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco, who led the agency for more than four years before former Rep. Mel Watt, D-NC, assumed a five-year term as the agency’s director in early January.
It’s only a matter of time before the remaining big bank defendants settle lawsuits filed by the Federal Housing Finance Agency over billions in non-agency mortgage-backed securities sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the years leading up to the housing crisis, predicts a legal expert. Last week, Bank of America agreed to a $9.3 billion settlement that covers its own dealings as well as those of Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch, which it acquired in 2008. The agreement covers some $57 billion of MBS issued or underwritten by these firms.
Whether by legislation or by regulation, a group of House Democrats want Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to give unemployed homeowners a break by issuing a foreclosure moratorium. Last month, Rep. Matt Cartwright, D-PA, filed H.R. 4255, the Stop Foreclosures Due to Congressional Dysfunction Act, which would require the Federal Housing Finance Agency to establish a six-month moratorium on GSE-guaranteed mortgages held by homeowners who have lost their emergency unemployment compensation “due to congressional inaction.” The bill requires that borrowers must have been in good standing prior to losing their unemployment benefits in order to be eligible for the temporary forbearance.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s oversight of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s pre-foreclosure inspection process can and should be enhanced by strengthening quality assurance and controls, according to a new audit by the agency’s Office of the Inspector General. The FHFA-OIG audit found potential fraud in property inspection reports ordered by the two GSEs. Among the findings: the property inspection reports – which are used for foreclosures – contained inaccurate information that conflicted with corresponding photographs.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac junior shareholders face an uphill battle in their lawsuits challenging the Treasury’s August 2012 “net worth sweep” that effectively allows Uncle Sam to confiscate all of the companies’ profits, warns a legal expert. Investors are challenging the amended agreements regarding the seniority of Fannie and Freddie preferred stock owned by the federal government over investors’ GSE preferred stocks. More than a dozen lawsuits filed against the government – led by hedge funds Perry Capital and Fairholme Capital Management – are pending in federal district court in Washington, DC, and in the Court of Federal Claims.
With housing finance reform unlikely to clear Congress in the near term even as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac remain “highly leveraged” on a global scale, a pair of policy advocates are urging Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to trigger existing protective regulations under his discretion that would classify the two GSEs as systemic risks to the economy. American Enterprise Institute Fellow Alex Pollock and Thomas Stanton, author and former Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission staffer, petitioned Lew in a letter this week to act in his capacity as chairman of the Financial Stability Oversight Council and designate Fannie and Freddie as Systemically Important Financial Institutions.
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