This week, Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Edward DeMarco, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, asking them to justify Fannie Mae’s policy of penalizing or suing strategic defaulters — those who can pay their More…
Washington is quiet, but that does not mean it is dormant. Staffers on the Hill and in the Treasury Department are working on a plan to restore normalcy to the mortgage market and to fix Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored enterprises that buy up mortgages from More…
Today, the House Ethics Committee released a number of documents related to the three charges against Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), accused of working to further a Treasury bailout for a bank with ties to her husband.
Last week, Fannie Mae announced it lost $1.2 billion in the second quarter and asked the Treasury Department for an additional $1.5 billion to see it through.
The Home Affordable Modification Program — designed to reduce homeowners’ monthly mortgage payments and to keep them in their homes — has been an abysmal failure. Back in January, my colleague Mary Kane reported that the program showed signs of falling far short of its goals. It has continued More…
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) will face a House ethics trial over allegations that she intervened to encourage the bailout of a bank her husband owned stock in. Waters sits on the House Financial Services Committee, and is the head of its housing and community opportunity subcommittee.
The More…
Despite Republican objections, congressional Democrats did not include reforms of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or of the broader mortgage market in the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform bill — now law. The administration has promised comprehensive reform but thus far has not named any objectives, costs More…
No. But the idea is out there. Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-Texas) has proposed requiring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to verify that everyone receiving a home loan backed by them is of legal status. On the site America Speaking Out, where House Republicans lets users submit and vote on More…
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…
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