Merger of Fannie, Freddie's bond units proposed Businessweek WASHINGTON (AP) - The federal regulator who oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is putting forward a plan to combine the two mortgage giants' divisions that issuing billions of dollars in securities backed by home loans. The plan announced Monday ... and more »

Alejandro Justiniano, Giorgio Primiceri, and Andrea Tambalotti. Household Leveraging and Deleveraging. Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports Staff Report Number 602, March 2013.

March 4, 2013: FHFA Outlines 2013 Goals for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

This blog post is part of a series for National Consumer Protection Week When you buy something it's hard to know if you're getting the best deal - and that includes when military families, who are often targets for marketers, are making big financial decisions. Even though some companies might try to take advantage of [...]

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Jeffrey Gundlach, one of the world's leading bond fund managers, has reversed his stance on government debt, saying he has bought "more long-term Treasuries in the last month" than in the last four years.

Buffett: Stocks are good buy; ketchup is forever Businessweek Warren Buffet says stocks are a good investment, long-term government bonds are a dumb one, and ketchup is forever. The billionaire investor covered a range of topics in a CNBC interview on Monday, including his purchase of ketchup maker Heinz, the ...

Despite the claim that it is “protecting consumers from irresponsible mortgage lenders,” the new Qualified Mortgage rule issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau turns out to be simply another and more direct way for the government to keep mortgage underwriting standards low.

The seemingly foregone conclusion that the stock market rise has been all about the Federal Reserve suddenly seems a little less foregone.

The sequester is all anybody wants to talk about. I get it: It’s the hip new crisis sweeping Washington. But remember Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? You know, the once quasi-independent housing giants whose takeover by the federal government has cost taxpayers upwards of $190 billion thus far? Well, Fannie and Freddie are still owned by the federal government and, on top of that, are the only thing holding the U.S.’ badly battered housing-finance system together, as the Feds back 9 out of 10 mortgages issued today. But Congress and the President have been so bogged down in their never-ending budget battles that we’ve heard little from Washington on this subject in recent months. Until last week, that is, when the Bipartisan Policy Center — a think tank formed by former Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, Bob Dole, and George Mitchell — tried to bring this very important issue back to the fore by releasing a 131-page report on the future of housing policy in America. (MORE: Home Prices Jump Again. Are We Out of the Woods Yet?) Their solution is to wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by slowly selling off their assets to the private sector as the economy improves. In their place, the government would create a public guarantor of mortgages, sort of like what Ginnie Mae does for FHA and VA loans now. This guarantor would not purchase mortgage-backed securities as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do now; rather it would simply insure mortgages in case of default, and charge a fee to do so. The BPC framework would also require issuers of mortgage-backed securities to purchase private insurance, so that the government guarantor would only have to step in in the case of a total real estate market meltdown, similar to the one we experienced in 2008. This system is more stable than the one in place prior to the crisis because the government guarantees would be explicit, and be accounted for in the budget. Furthermore, any...

Speech at the 2013 National Association for Business Economics Policy Conference, Washington, D.C.

The staggering amount of outstanding student debt- nearly a trillion dollars owed - is beginning to impede the economy as a whole, a new report from the New York Federal Reserve suggests, chiefly by robbing the housing market of its richest crop of new buyers: young college graduates.