The White House believes that the current housing finance system, where the government guarantees more than 80 percent of all mortgages through Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and FHA, is unsustainable.
According to an IRS private-letter ruling, certain excess servicing rights would constitute a real-estate asset, and income from the spread would be treated as interest on obligations secured by mortgages on real property.
A federal district court in New York last week ruled that a landmark discrimination lawsuit, the first to connect racial discrimination to the securitization of mortgage-backed securities, can move forward against Morgan Stanley. A July 25 ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Adkins v. Morgan Stanley denied in part the investment bank’s motion to dismiss the case, which alleges violations of the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. The putative class-action suit was filed...
Mary Jo White, chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, stressed this week that the regulator plans to increase its enforcement activity, including more emphasis on trials. However, she said the SEC needs more appropriations from Congress to accomplish its goals. “We can’t judge at this point how many additional trials we’re going to have, but we already don’t have enough,” White said at a hearing this week by the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. President Obama’s proposed...
After the dust-up in the capital markets from the last meeting of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee over when the central bank will begin to “taper” its huge asset purchase program, this week’s meeting of the FOMC provided no new clues about the timing of the Fed’s exit strategy. “To support a stronger economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at the rate most consistent with its dual mandate, the committee decided to continue purchasing additional agency MBS at a pace of $40 billion per month and longer-term Treasury securities at a pace of $45 billion per month,” the FOMC said, reiterating previous announcements. Also, the FOMC is...[Includes one data chart]
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