Joseph Otting, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, set the rumor mills in motion last week when he told an audience at George Mason University Law School that the agency would finish work this summer on final capital rules for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The housing-finance reform outline from Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-ID, got its first airing on Capitol Hill this week with most witnesses giving it a thumbs up while cautioning the devil is in the details.

President Trump late Wednesday issued a memo ordering the Treasury Department to end the decade-long-plus historic conservatorships of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and design a plan to overhaul the nation’s secondary mortgage market.

A roundup of the week's developing news.

Joseph Otting’s dual role as acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency puts him in a position to push hard for changes that will help create a “healthy” non-agency mortgage market, according to the Structured Finance Industry Group.

At a hearing on Capitol Hill Tuesday, Kathy Kraninger, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, assured lawmakers that she will not disrupt the mortgage industry by abruptly terminating the so-called GSE patch.

With Mark Calabria’s confirmation as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency seemingly imminent and the prospect looming of some kind of administrative reform of the government-sponspored enterprises, industry groups are getting anxious.

Violation of borrowing pacts; a new strategy for TIAA...

This week, Mark Calabria moved a step closer to heading the Federal Housing Finance Agency. His nomination as the agency’s director was approved by the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on a party-line vote of 13-12.