The Consumer Financial Freedom and Washington Accountability Act, sponsored by House Financial Services Committee member Rep. Sean Duffy, R-WI, would, among other things, replace the single CFPB director with a five-member commission appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

So, mortgage firms are reducing “overlays” and expanding credit to borrowers in need. Right? Not necessarily.

A spokesman for Ocwen said the company did not like the way the IMFnews story was being “interpreted.” After the story was published early Friday afternoon, Ocwen’s share price began to rise and continued to increase Monday.

With the Federal Reserve acquiring a significant portion of new agency MBS issuance, the aggregate MBS holdings of banks and thrifts continued to decline in late 2013, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside MBS & ABS. Commercial banks and savings institutions held a total of $1.507 trillion of residential MBS in portfolio as of the end of last year, newly-released call-report data reveal. That was down 0.4 percent from the end of the third quarter and marked the industry’s fifth consecutive quarterly decline. Bank and thrift MBS holdings fell...[Includes two data charts]

Researchers at the Federal Reserve determined that, contrary to “the prevailing view in economics literature,” quantitative easing initiatives by the Fed over the past few years had an impact on the pricing and yields for agency MBS. In a new study, Fed analysts Diana Hancock and Wayne Passmore found that the central bank’s purchases of Treasury securities and agency MBS since 2008 lowered MBS yields and mortgage interest rates by more than what would have been suggested by changes in market expectations alone. Hancock and Passmore said...

In what’s claimed to be the third-largest settlement of a class-action suit by investors in non-agency MBS, Royal Bank of Scotland agreed to pay $275 million in cash. Investors led by the New Jersey Carpenters Vacation Fund claimed that RBS did not disclose that loans included in Harborview MBS that it sold failed to meet the deals’ underwriting guidelines. The settlement is awaiting approval by U.S. District Judge Harold Baer in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Separately, the remains of Lehman Brothers settled...

Although some industry groups said it is too soon to get into another massive overhaul, others pointed to the forest of overlapping and confusing documents as a good place to start.

Although some regulators have anxiety problems with nonbank servicers, Fannie Mae apparently does not. Meanwhile, a large mortgage vendor M&A deal could be revealed late Friday.

Fannie Mae reported net earnings of $6.5 billion in the fourth quarter late this week, revealing that the company’s total dividend payments to the U.S. Treasury will exceed the $116.1 billion that the GSE has drawn since being put into conservatorship in late 2008. The company will pay the Treasury $7.2 billion in dividends in March. With the March dividend payment, Fannie will have paid a total of $121.1 billion in dividends to the Treasury – the equivalent amount of its entire draw plus an additional $5.0 billion.

A recently unearthed Treasury Department “action memorandum” from 2010 makes clear the White House’s commitment to ensuring that common shareholders in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should never have access “to any positive earnings from the GSEs in the future.” The memo, approved by then-Secretary Timothy Geithner, asks that Treasury waive the GSEs’ periodic commitment fee for 2011.