This morning, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Neil Barofsky, released his latest quarterly report on the state of the Obama administration’s signature effort to calm the financial markets — from banking to credit to housing. In it, he lambastes the Home Affordable More…
Today, Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or SIGTARP — in layman’s terms, the government’s watchdog over the program to stabilize the banking sector and housing market — released a quarterly report on how things are going. TARP programs did well to stabilize More…
CNN has done the hard work of parsing the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform bill, and has found that the final version calls for a whopping 68 studies — more than twice the number of previous estimates.
Instead of toughening up ethical and marketing standards for financial planners, Congress
On Wednesday, Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored enterprise that buys up mortgage contracts from loan originators to keep the housing market liquid, announced new penalties for homeowners who strategically default. “Defaulting borrowers who walk away and had the capacity to pay or did not complete a workout alternative in More…
Today, Edward Pinto, Fannie Mae’s chief credit officer from 1987 to 1989 and a prominent housing consultant, testified before the House Oversight Committee on the question of whether loan servicers are doing enough to prevent foreclosure and preserve homeownership. His bottom line: The Treasury Department’s Home Affordable Modification Program, More…
Politico’s Morning Money reports that a proposal penciled — literally — into the financial regulatory reform bill in conference committee last night might put big Wall Street banks on the hook for the cost of winding down Fannie and Freddie — a cost that could reach into the hundreds More…
Fannie Mae, the ailing government-sponsored entity that buys mortgages on the secondary market, has bumped up penalties for strategic defaulters. Now, it will lock out anyone who could afford to pay her mortgage but chooses not to, and defaults instead, for seven years.
It is not entirely More…
As I’ve noted on the blog, since the government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in September 2008, their roles in the housing market have changed dramatically. They aren’t profit-motivated, but stability-motivated, a government liquidity instrument to make sure mortgages remain affordable despite the credit crunch and housing More…
This morning, the Federal Housing Finance Agency ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored enterprises that support the housing market, to delist “their common and preferred stock from the New York Stock Exchange and any other national securities exchange.”
Why? The stock prices were rock-bottom, and the FHFA More…
That is the worst-case scenario, according to Egan-Jones Ratings Co., quoted in a Bloomberg article making the rounds. The agency says that if home prices decline 20 percent from their current level — they are now off around 25 percent from their summer 2006 peak — losses will ultimately More…
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