Outgoing CEO Don Layton talks about the economics of credit-risk transfer, GSE reform, life after Freddie, and ending the conservatorship.

A class-action lawsuit filed last month in the Southern District of New York accusing the largest authorized dealers in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt bonds of engaging in a systematic price-fixing scheme just got a little more interesting.

In October, the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco reached a $3.6 million settlement with two former executives in its Washington, DC, office of legislative and regulatory affairs who claimed they were the victims of racial discrimination. There’s just one problem: Despite apparently reaching an agreement during mediation, the bank didn’t pay up.

Interim CEO Hugh Frater’s six-month odyssey at Fannie Mae just got longer last week when the board selected him to take the position permanently. His tenure became effective March 26, and he will remain on the board directors.

Fannie Mae last week announced it completed a multi-tranche credit-insurance-risk transfer transaction covering an astonishing $11.7 billion worth of multifamily loans held in portfolio.

There was a lot of kumbaya among industry experts last week during the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs’ two days of hearings on the housing-finance reform outlined last month by panel Chairman Mike Crapo, R-ID.

Last week, Joseph Otting, the then-acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, set the GSE rumor mills churning when he told an audience at George Mason University Law School that the agency would finish work this summer on the final capital rule for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Democrats have begun to respond to last week’s Trump administration memorandum, which directed the Secretary of the Treasury to coordinate with the Federal Housing Finance Agency and other executive branch departments to develop a plan to end the conservatorships of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Banks and thrifts racked up $571 billion of advances from the Federal Home Loan Bank system at the end of 2018, a 3.3% sequential gain but off 1.9% from a year ago, according to an analysis by Inside The GSEs. [Includes one data chart.]