One GSE watcher called it, "The biggest company quarterly profit since the Roman Empire, adjusted for inflation of course.”

GSE originators have long complained that the rep-and-warrant policies need to be more transparent.

Rep. Sherman of California noted: “Studies have shown that in some geographic areas, it is possible to determine the identity of nearly 100 percent of the borrowers using the data that lenders are required to collect and report by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.”

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau late last week filed its much-anticipated response to the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to grant the agency’s request for an en banc rehearing in its legal wrangling with PHH Mortgage over allegations of violating the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. The CFPB made three main arguments. First, the bureau’s structure is constitutional. “Neither the bureau’s single-director structure, nor the for-cause removal provision, unduly interferes with the president’s ability to take care that the laws be faithfully executed” under the U.S. Constitution, it said. If the court were to decide that the agency’s structure is unconstitutional, the bureau added...

A shift in recent years in servicing from banks to nonbanks has been pinned on the capital treatment for bank holdings of mortgage servicing rights, among other issues. However, a survey conducted by the American Bankers Association found that few small banks are selling MSR due to capital standards or other regulatory requirements. The ABA surveyed 159 banks as part of its annual real-estate lending survey. About 76.0 percent of the participating institutions had assets of less than $1.0 billion. Only 2.0 percent of respondents said...

As might be expected, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, did his best to pummel the CFPB and its Director Richard Cordray during a hearing Wednesday.

The Fed owns roughly $1.7 trillion worth of agency MBS. But don’t expect any wholesale dumping to take place…

Employee turnover is becoming a trend at Walter. Two weeks ago, the company's chief legal officer Jonathan Pedersen resigned.

In an interview, Ocwen’s chief compliance officer said: "We are a fully-transformed company and very anxious to break away from some of the regulatory constraints..."

The media call with Barney Frank was sponsored by the Constitutional Accountability Center, which assisted scores of current and former Democrat members of Congress in filing an amicus brief in defense of the CFPB.