Following contentious debate at times with Democrats, House Republicans last week advanced another installment of six narrow bills that would further curtail GSE activities or increase oversight while in conservatorship.The mark-up by the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets and GSEs brings the total number of GOP-backed bills to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac awaiting the full committee’s consideration up to 14 so far.

A bill that would limit the payment of legal fees for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives accused of fraud has been sent back to the drawing board for some additional tweaking.

A trio of House lawmakers from both parties rolled out legislation this week designed to prevent Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and their regulator from blocking state and local clean energy initiatives that allow homeowners to install green upgrades.PACE, or property-assessed clean energy, programs enable local governments to finance renewable energy and energy efficiency projects such as solar panels, insulation and water conservation systems for their homes and commercial buildings. The financing is paid for by raising the individual homeowner’s tax.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a potential nemesis regarded warily by the mortgage finance industry, officially opened for business this week without a Senate-confirmed director, but not without new brouhaha over the position. President Obama nominated Richard Cordray, the CFPB’s chief of enforcement, to be the first official director of the new agency. Prior to joining the bureau in January, Cordray was the Ohio attorney general for two years. Before that, he served for two years as Ohio’s state treasurer. It came as no surprise that Obama did not ...

Nevada. Assembly Bill 77 was recently signed into law, revising a number of provisions governing mortgage lending and the conduct and supervision of related professionals (escrow agents and agencies, mortgage bankers, brokers and agents, etc.), and providers of certain covered services... North Carolina. House Bill 312 was approved, amending the methods for recording a satisfaction of a security instrument with the register of deeds. It also clarifies the requirements for electronically registering plats with the register of deeds, and amends restrictions on access to military discharge documents recorded with the register of deeds. The majority of the bill becomes effective Oct. 1, 2011...

Witnesses testifying before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee this week had diverse opinions about the effectiveness of the Dodd-Frank Act to protect investors, but one thing was clear: without the money, the Securities and Exchange Commission will never be able to get anything done. Republicans and Democrats in the committee were not-so-surprisingly at odds over the now one-year-old law. Sen. Tim Johnson, D-SD, urged members of the committee and the witnesses present to “give these provisions a chance to work.” Meanwhile, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-AL, argued that Dodd-Frank “has not ...

House Republicans this week pushed through six more bills designed to wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac but not before Democrats debated and managed to pass a couple of speed-bump amendments. The focus in the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government-Sponsored Enterprises thus far has been on an assortment of narrow measures that would continue to squeeze Fannie and Freddie’s activities and increase GSE oversight while in conservatorship. During a markup this week, Democrats and some disaffected GOP subcommittee members spent a substantial amount of ...

Peter Wallison, a commissioner on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, violated the FCIC’s ethics guidelines and was extremely difficult to work with, according to an investigation by Democratic staff on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. A report released this week by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-MD, the ranking member on the committee, also revealed that FCIC staff thoroughly debunked mortgage-related claims made by Edward Pinto, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Pinto claimed that the economic crisis of 2007 was caused by ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is working on a proposed regulation that seeks to harmonize existing standards for determining when a housing practice with a discriminatory impact violates the Fair Housing Act. The proposed rule would cover the liability standards in instances in which a racially neutral housing practice has a discriminatory effect. The disparate impact theory has been used in fair housing cases to allege discriminatory activity when the terms of a business policy are neutral toward protected classes but the policy is shown to have greater impact on minorities or other protected groups. There has been debate over...

A new bipartisan bill introduced last week that would replace the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with a single, government-owned entity designed to issue and guarantee mortgage-backed securities demonstrates the lack of political consensus – within the Republican party and Congress in general – about how to deal with the GSE problem. The new bill, H.R. 2413, the Secondary Market Facility for Residential Mortgages Act of 2011, would effectively merge Fannie and Freddie into a single government-backed entity that would issue and guarantee MBS. The MBS would have an explicit government guarantee paid for by...