What’s the best way to entice a workaholic mortgage loan officer who knows how to bring home the bacon? Answer: Pay them a huge signing bonus.

Despite new public pronouncements by lawmakers and administration officials that housing finance reform remains a “top priority,” industry observers warn there is little chance of legislation clearing Congress, ensuring a status quo that leaves the uber-profitable Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in place and pumping money into the Treasury. Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Ranking Member Mike Crapo, R-ID, broke a long public silence by reiterating their intention to push bipartisan housing finance reform in a statement on Wednesday.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – during two different periods last year – spent nearly $20 billion buying roughly 85,000 loans despite clear warnings or questions about the appraisals, according to a new audit from the Inspector General of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. As part of its report, the FHFA-OIG has made 14 recommendations to FHFA regarding the matter, calling on the regulator to ensure the GSEs make better use of appraisal information generated by a uniform collateral data portal the agency told the two to develop in 2010.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, as part of its new “servicing project,” is once again reviewing minimum fees paid to servicers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans, according to industry advisors briefed on the matter. Among other things, the servicing project is reviewing how large-scale packages of GSE receivables are sold and transferred. This was not entirely unexpected, given the massive sales of mortgage servicing rights the past 18 months. But mortgage bankers thought changing the minimum servicing fee of 25 basis points was a dead issue.

Morgan Stanley & Co. this week disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it likely will pay $1.25 billion to settle charges that it sold faulty non-agency mortgage-backed securities to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the years leading up to the financial crisis. The settlement, however, is not final “and there’s one more stop to it,” said one observer close to matter.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency last week issued regulations that clamp down on “golden parachute” severance payments to departing GSE executives. Published in the Jan. 28 Federal Register, the FHFA’s final rule applies to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Banks and the Office of Finance, as well as any “entity-affiliated parties,” including independent contractors such as attorneys, accountants and appraisers.

Government lawyers have run the numbers again and have now concluded that Bank of America should pay a lot more than the initially-sought $864 million penalty over mortgage fraud related to Countrywide Financial’s “Hustle” program. The Justice Department filed papers with Manhattan Federal Judge Jed Rakoff Wednesday requesting the Charlotte-based BofA be fined $2.1 billion for Countrywide’s fraudulent sale of toxic mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the years leading up to the financial crisis.

A Manhattan federal bankruptcy court last week approved Lehman Brother’s proposed $2 billion-plus settlement that would end an $18.9 billion claim filed against the defunct investment bank by Fannie Mae over soured mortgage securities. Judge James Peck of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York signed off on the settlement agreement between Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and the government-sponsored enterprise, as well as Lehman’s wholly owned subsidiaries Aurora Commercial Group and Aurora Loan Services. ALS was a large Alt A lender/servicer.

Freddie Prices First Risk-Sharing Transaction of 2014. Freddie Mac this week announced a $1 billion offering of its Structured Agency Credit Risk debt notes. The deal is backed by 140,000 residential loans, representing an unpaid principal balance of approximately $32.4 billion. This STACR pool consists of 30-year fixed-rate single-family mortgages acquired by Freddie in the second quarter of 2013.More than 65 investors participated in the offering, Freddie said.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac issued $47.0 billion in single-family mortgage-backed securities during January, starting 2014 off with a 15.8 percent decline from December 2013, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis. January’s drop was even steeper, at 61.9 percent, from the same period a year ago.