Unless the Federal Housing Finance Agency acts soon, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will see their capital buffers fall to zero on Jan. 1, 2018. Having zero capital may not be a big deal, initially – but a new complication has arrived in the form of hurricanes Harvey and Irma. According to Tim Rood, chairman of The Collingwood Group, the government-sponsored enterprises are not looking at losses “that will cost tens of billions of dollars – but they don’t need to be. The capital buffer is small as it is. And if a credit event happens, it could wipe out the thin layer of capital they have in a hurry.” If Rood – a former Fannie executive – is correct, the GSEs might have...
The signors add: “We … believe the debate over recapitalizing a broken system distracts from the critical structural issues that Congress must address to ensure that the federally supported secondary market serves key, bipartisan objectives.”
Congress is not expected to produce workable GSE legislation until next year and even then, other issues – tax reform, another run at fixing “Obamacare,” for example – could kick the can down the road.
Over the past several weeks, the Treasury Department has been meeting with several industry trade groups about the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, discussing – among other things – what to do about the impending “zero capital” problem as well as the topic of multiple guarantors. Treasury’s goal, these officials said, is to come up with a workable blueprint on the future of the government-sponsored enterprises and the nation’s housing finance system – changes that might touch Ginnie Mae as well. Late this week there was...
Credit-risk transfers can be used to calculate guarantee fees because they’re indicative of what the private market would charge for the risk taken on by a government-sponsored enterprise, according to Freddie Mac. But the mortgage giant explained that g-fees are likely more stable than a system that relies exclusively on credit-risk transfers. Kevin Palmer, Freddie’s senior vice president of single-family credit risk transfers, said in a white paper the significant amount of credit risk being transferred to the private capital markets provides a way to calculate a market-implied g-fee. Since 2013, the GSE has transferred much of the credit risk on $760 billion of MBS it guarantees. Based on the pricing of Freddie’s Structured Agency Credit Risk transactions over the past year, the market-implied g-fee has been...
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