-
Investors Business Daily this week continued playing the role of drummer boy in the relentless assault from the right on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Community Reinvestment Act as the chief culprits of the financial crisis. In a March 3 editorial, IBD dismisses the conclusions of the bipartisan Financial...
-
The central goal of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) in managing its conservatorship of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is and conserving the assets of the corporations by minimizing their credit losses from delinquent mortgages. This goal and others were outlined in a letter earlier this month from...
-
Yesterday Freddie Mac announced that it would purchase "substantially all" of the seriously delinquent loans from their fixed-rate mortgage Participation Certificate (PC) securities. The implications of the move extend well beyond the immediate effect on the investors in Freddie Mac securities...
-
I think all of us would agree that the Housing Finance System in this country is broken. The ability for the once powerful secondary marketing vehicles to provide liquidity to the housing industry is at risk. Private securitization has been out of business for over two years, the agency markets required...
-
Home Today's Headlines ATW Forums Q&A Mortgage Rates Top Stories Don't Expect the GSEs to Go Away Anytime Soon GNMA paper is already explicitly guaranteed, expect GNMA and the FHA to continue to be a crutch (responsibly). In terms of GSE paper, while I still believe... - MND NewsWire Pay Option ARM...
-
The FHFA today released the Foreclosure Prevention & Refinance Report for the Third Quarter 2009. This report is intended to provide disclosure and analysis of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loan data. It discusses the GSE's loan portfolio size and composition, the performance of the portfolio, and...
-
Over the holidays the US Treasury issued an update on the status of government support for housing programs. Here is a quote from the release : "Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury provided an update on initiatives established under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act (HERA) of 2008, which...
-
The government's move to ease the limits on the securities holdings of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has ignited a debate among analysts about what the companies will do with their longer leash. When the Treasury Department took over Fannie and Freddie last year, one of the requirements they set for...
-
There is no independent auditor overseeing the federal agency responsible for some $6 trillion in home mortgages, because the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel ruled that the agency's inspector general didn't have authority to operate, according to internal memos obtained by...
-
What a difference 18 months can make. Need an example? Look no further than recent news from the GSEs that lenders are thumbing their noses at repurchase and reimbursement requests in record numbers. As reported in their quarterly filings, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are seeing an increase in the number...
-
Not a week goes by that someone doesn't send me a script for a Hollywood movie based on mortgage banking . Usually it is either a) zany comedy starring Ben Stiller as a loan agent who doesn't know that the jumbo market has gone away, with Samuel L. Jackson as an irate borrower, b) an intense...
-
Time seems to fly in the mortgage banking business. Here we are, less than a week until the national conference in San Diego. Heck, here we are approaching Halloween! And I know that I am getting old when I wake up with that “morning-after feeling” and I didn't do anything the night before...
-
What’s not clear from yesterday's announcement is whether or not Fannie and Freddie are acting strategically or at the behest of Treasury or FHFA. Strategically this makes a lot of sense since the GSE’s have long supported a diverse market of loan sellers: credit unions, community banks...
-
Programs are underway on so many fronts to get foreclosures under control that it can be difficult to sort them all out. Early last week the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Office of Comptroller of the Currency issued their second quarter summary of foreclosure avoidance activity among large loan...
-
The Federal Reserve today reported on their weekly purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS). In the five trading days between August 13 and August 19, the Federal Reserve purchased a gross total of $26.640 billion agency MBS. After subtracting sales (providing liquidity/the roll) the Fed's...