The Federal Housing Finance Agency has issued an interim final regulation with a request for comments on changes to its existing Freedom of Information Act regulations. In its notice, published in the May 23 Federal Register, the FHFA said it is updating its existing FOIA regulations to include the FHFA Office of Inspector General. The FHFA-OIG did not yet exist when the Finance Agency’s original FOIA regulations were issued in 2009.

In light of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s federal conservatorship status and the resulting control by the Treasury Department, the two GSEs are “effectively part of the government” and their operations should be reflected in the federal budget, according to the Congressional Budget Office.CBO has concluded that using a fair-value approach to estimate Fannie and Freddie’s subsidy costs is the best way to give Congress and taxpayers the most accurate accounting information.

Although federal regulators this week gave the industry more time to comment on their controversial proposal on risk retention in non-agency MBS and ABS transactions, some industry experts have already suggested that the concept fails to address its fundamental purpose of strengthening deal quality by aligning the interests of securitizers and investors. Risk retention is an intellectually appealing idea, but it’s not clear that it provides...

Bank executives expect it will be a tall order for their firms to address the various tax implications of the Dodd-Frank Act, as well as the Basel III liquidity standards, particularly with regard to securitizations, according to a recent survey by audit, tax and advisory firm KPMG. KPMG reported that 48 percent of respondents said their firms were still trying to figure out the tax implications of Dodd-Frank and Basel III, while 49 percent said...

Some imprecise language in last year’s financial reform legislation has thrust the Federal Reserve into a quandary on how best to define “qualified mortgage” under the new law, according to some top industry lawyers and market analysts...

Last week’s ground-breaking settlements between U.S. bank regulators and many of the top mortgage servicers in the country may bring some certainty to the industry about the ultimate resolution of the foreclosure crisis still gripping parts of the nation, but it’s also likely to lead to higher costs and more labor-intensive compliance efforts, according to a consensus of industry analysts...

Two of the mortgage lending industry’s top service provides, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems and Lender Processing Services, will not be continuing business as usual, now that federal banking regulators have announced consent orders with the two firms that call for a substantial amount of remediation of significant institutional weaknesses...

Judge Rya Zobel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts last week granted Bank of America’s motion for an extension of time to respond to the call for injunctive relief from a group of BofA homeowners that asked the court to dismiss the bank’s foreclosures on their homes...

Philadelphia-based Shaffer & Gaier, a consumer protection law firm, has been racking up a series of foreclosure dismissals against some of the biggest mortgage lenders in the land lately, including Bank of America, Citibank, Chase Home Finance and, most recently, U.S. Bank...

The Seattle-based law firm Keller Rohrback has begun beating the bushes for borrowers who were obligated to accept forced-placed insurance on their mortgages by Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase or other top servicers in the country...