Wertheimer testified that during her tenure, the FHFA-OIG has issued 85 reports and made 117 recommendations to address supervisory shortcomings.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is close to issuing a final anti-churning rule to better protect veterans from predatory lending practices as well as developing an end-to-end system to monitor loan performance from origination to servicing.

At his first appearance before Congress as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Mick Mulvaney restated his desire to reform the agency, while defending his leadership from Democrats’ harsh accusations that he is undermining the bureau.

With GSE reform all but dead, rumors about possible administrative changes abound...

Fitch said the $3 billion reserve should be sufficient to cover income volatility during “the normal course of business, as seen when interest-rate volatility results in valuation adjustments within the GSEs’ derivative portfolios.”

Mulvaney – a former GOP Congressman from South Carolina and a Tea Party acolyte – declared: “The Bureau’s new strategic priorities are to recognize free markets and consumer choice and to take a prudent, consistent, and humble approach to enforcing the law.”

Bright said actions Ginnie has taken send a clear message to the industry and to investors that it is intent on eliminating the problem.

In a nut shell, Wells argues it’s not running a charity (but of course) and that executive compensation is “designed to pay for performance and encourage long-term shareholder value.”

Ginnie Mae this week meted penalties to two of the nine issuers that received warnings from the agency for excessive refinancings of VA mortgages. Bloomberg reported that Ginnie barred NewDay Financial’s and Nations Lending’s from the more lucrative multi-issuer mortgage-backed securities pools, forcing them to issue custom pools. The restrictions became effective immediately. The agency’s action could reduce mortgage interest rates by 50 basis points for FHA and VA loans, which would benefit first-time homebuyers, said Jaret Seiberg, an analyst with Cowen Washington Research Group. On the other hand, the issuers Ginnie limited to issuing custom pools will end up making loans with higher rates, the analyst noted. Ginnie’s action is part of a joint effort with the Department of Veterans Affairs to crack down on loan churning and faster prepayments of VA loans pooled in Ginnie securities. Loan churning ...

Ginnie Mae’s anti-churning efforts have narrowed the spread between Ginnie and Fannie Mae mortgage-backed securities, prompting executives to say things are almost back to normal. In an interview with Inside FHA/VA Lending this week, Michael Bright, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Ginnie Mae, said the market and investors have responded positively to the agency’s efforts to resolve the churning and prepayment problems. “The Ginnie spread has fallen almost half a point and our securities have become more liquid,” he said. “We want to make sure we’re giving investors CPRs (constant prepayment rates) that they can model.” Bright said he cares less about the overall level of prepayment speeds. What he truly cares about is ensuring that when an investor purchases a Ginnie security, the prepay speed is correlated to changes in the interest rates and not the ...