Director Mark Calabria’s decision to reverse former acting Director Joseph Otting’s reversal of a Mel Watt-era decision to defend the constitutionality of the FHFA structure catches GSE observers by surprise.

The indictment of apartment mogul Robert Morgan and several of his associates may have accelerated the prepayment speeds of dozens of Fannie’s and Freddie’s multifamily MBS.

One of the last legal dramas from the subprime crisis took a surprise turn last week when FHFA sued Wells over a case that had been settled earlier this year. At stake: more than $1 billion in RMBS issued 13 years ago.

A class-action lawsuit filed last month in the Southern District of New York accusing the largest authorized dealers in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt bonds of engaging in a systematic price-fixing scheme just got a little more interesting.

In October, the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco reached a $3.6 million settlement with two former executives in its Washington, DC, office of legislative and regulatory affairs who claimed they were the victims of racial discrimination. There’s just one problem: Despite apparently reaching an agreement during mediation, the bank didn’t pay up.

A panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a ruling filed earlier this month, found that a reseller of mortgage loans could demand that an originator repurchase defective loans, even though the contract between the two companies did not prescribe a specific timeframe within which the originator must cure any defects. The decision reversed a lower court’s ruling.

Investors Unite, a group of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders seeking to reverse the so-called net profit sweep — the mechanism by which the Federal Housing Finance Agency sends all GSE profits to the Treasury as dividends — held a sort of figurative rally last week to celebrate a recent string of legal victories.

In a joint letter sent late last month, Maxine Waters, D-CA, chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Sherrod Brown, D-OH, ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, raised serious questions about the legitimacy of Joseph Otting’s recent designation as acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

In what must come as a relief for Fannie Mae, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month ruled that the enterprise is not a credit reporting agency as defined by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

In an about-face, the Federal Housing Finance Agency told the Fifth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals that it will no longer defend the constitutionality of its single-director leadership structureunderthe Housing and Economic Recovery Act, which created the FHFA.