Free Republic

‘They are . . . not interested in asking millionaires and billionaires to pay a half a penny on the dollar for the sake of the future of our children and communities.” That was the reaction of Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) upon the defeat Thursday evening of the bill he sponsored that paired an element of President Obama’s jobs plan — funding for the hiring of some first responders and hundreds of thousands of unionized teachers — with a surtax on those earning more than $1 million. Yet that same evening, Menendez and his fellow Democrats — as well...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Government-controlled mortgage giant Freddie Mac has requested $6 billion in additional aid after posting a wider loss in the third quarter. Freddie Mac said Thursday that it lost $6 billion, or $1.86 per share, in the July-September quarter. That compares with a loss of $4.1 billion, or $1.25 a share, in the same quarter of 2010. This quarter's $6 billion request from taxpayers is the largest since April 2010. Freddie's losses are increasing mainly for two reasons: Many homeowners are paying less interest because they are able to refinance at lower mortgage rates. And failing and bankrupt...

The Obama administration’s efforts to fix the housing crisis may have fallen well short of helping millions of distressed mortgage holders, but they have led to seven-figure paydays for some top executives at troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, the government regulator for Fannie and Freddie, approved $12.79 million in bonus pay after 10 executives from the two government-sponsored corporations last year met modest performance targets tied to modifying mortgages in jeopardy of foreclosure. The executives got the bonuses about two years after the federally backed mortgage giants received nearly $170 billion in...

President Obama says the Occupy Wall Street protests show a "broad-based frustration" among Americans with the financial sector, which continues to kick against regulatory reforms three years after the financial crisis. "You're seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to fight efforts to crack down on the abusive practices that got us into this in the first place," he complained earlier this month. But what if government encouraged, even invented, those "abusive practices"?

President Obama’s message to spur the economy has changed from “pass this bill” to “we can’t wait.” And mortgage rates are the impatient administration’s first target. Rather than waiting for congressional action to improve the outlook for homeowners, the White House is making it easier to refinance loans backed by the Home Affordable Refinance Program. Though the executive branch can’t legally reach into the practices of private lenders, here is a look at a list of changes (and nudges) the administration plans to implement beginning on Nov. 15:

THE mortgage business is moribund. New loans are down. New foreclosures are up. But why let a little sorry news get in the way of a good party? Last week, almost 3,000 people descended on the Hyatt Regency in Chicago for the 98th annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association... --snip-- Representative Randy Neugebauer, the Texas Republican who heads the oversight and investigations subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee, said he was disturbed by the turnout from Fannie and Freddie. It reflected a troubling “business as usual” approach by the mortgage giants, he said. “They don’t act like companies...

I didn't “Occupy” Wall Street, though I spent enough hours working there that a sleeping bag could have come in handy. I can attest to one of the protesters' claims about Wall Street bankers: While most are good and ethical people, they are supremely money-oriented, and, like the bear that sniffed out a Payday in my trash, they'll take the path of least resistance to find theirs. However, the profit motive is not a bad impulse, and countries with economic systems that ignore it suffer worse economies. In our system, the accumulation of profits is an important metric of success,...

In today’s Wall Street Journal: Asked who was to blame for the 2008 financial crisis and whether any bankers should have been prosecuted, Mrs. Bachmann and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich put the onus on the federal government, with Mr. Gingrich suggesting that former Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank, former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, should both be jailed.“It was the federal government that pushed the subprime loans . . . that pushed the community reinvestment act,� said Mrs. Bachmann, citing what she considered the causes of the housing meltdown.Mr. Frank released an emailed...

Regulators are nearing a settlement with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over whether the mortgage finance giants adequately disclosed their exposure to risky subprime loans, bringing to a close a three-year investigation. The proposed agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, under the terms being discussed, would include no monetary penalty or admission of fraud, according to several people briefed on the case. But a settlement would represent the most significant acknowledgement

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was a key architect of a law passed in 1992 that set Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on the road to ruin, according to a new book by Robert Stowe England to be released September 30 by Praeger. The book, Black Box Casino, uncovers the myriad factors that led to the financial crisis of 2008, the worst financial implosion of modern times. This story is one of many threads woven into the book's narrative. ACORN was a key leader in clandestine negotiations among housing activists to shape new legislation that would...

U.S. Set To Sue Big Banks Over Bad Mortgages Agency says B of A, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, others misrepresented securities By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ The federal agency that oversees the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is set to file suits against more than a dozen big banks, accusing them of misrepresenting the quality of mortgage securities they assembled and sold at the height of the housing bubble, and seeking billions of dollars in compensation. The Federal Housing Finance Agency suits, which are expected to be filed in the coming days in federal court, are aimed at Bank...

Here's a novel idea: Have Congress create a "bank" that could borrow huge sums with only a small federal outlay and would be independent of any political interference. If you believe in this miracle, you probably thought Fannie Mae was a private company that wouldn't cost taxpayers a dime. We're referring to Washington's latest marketing tool to sell spending to a skeptical public, a new federal "infrastructure bank." For the low, low price of $30 billion or so, President Obama says Congress can conjure hundreds of billions in new "grants and loans" to rebuild "roads, bridges, and ports and broadband...

Abstract: Five of the world's richest hedge fund managers, including George Soros, the man who the broke the Bank of England, have been called to account by US politicians for their role in the collapse of the global financial system. The quintet – including John Paulson, who made $3.7bn (£2.49bn) last year betting against the US mortgage market – were grilled over their roles in buying unregulated derivatives products, which some politicians believe contributed to the financial markets' meltdown. The men, who each earned more than $1bn each last year, were called to account by Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman, who...

There have been rumblings for weeks that the economic plan to be offered by President Obama after he returns from his vacation would be aimed, at least in part, at trying to re-inflate the American housing market. The dribbles from the White House on housing have hinted at some big ideas: having the government hold and lease foreclosed homes and even having the government fully take over busted and bailed out mortgage buyers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The trial balloon in today’s New York Times puts the earlier leaks in perspective. The idea is to have the government offer...

So far the U.S. government has bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the tune of at least $130 billion, and perhaps as much as $1 trillion. And yet, the Obama administration continues to stonewall the release of documents that could shed light on why Fannie and Freddie failed, thereby sending the economy into a tailspin from which we have yet to recover. (Those records are housed at the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) now that Fannie and Freddie are owned and operated by the federal government.)

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Struggling to clear its inventory of foreclosed properties, the Obama administration said Wednesday it’s looking for investor ideas for converting more than 92,000 foreclosed properties owned by the U.S. government into rental units, a sign of the depths to which the U.S. housing market has sunk. “Exploring new options for selling these foreclosed properties will help expand access to affordable rental housing, promote private investment in local housing markets and support neighborhood and home-price stability,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a statement. The Obama administration is working with the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the regulator for...

WASHINGTON - Like many members of Congress, Rep. Michele Bachmann has been a fierce critic of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, blaming the government-backed loan programs for excesses that helped create the financial meltdown in 2008. And like millions of other home purchasers, Bachmann took out a home loan in 2008 that offered lower costs to the borrower through one of the federally subsidized programs, according to mortgage experts who reviewed her loan documents. Just a few weeks before Bachmann called for dismantling the programs during a House Financial Services Committee hearing, she and her husband signed for a $417,000...

The Obama administration is examining ways to pull foreclosed properties off the market and rent them to help stabilize the housing market, according to people familiar with the matter.

“Reckless Endangerment” a scalding new book ....... is another cautionary tale about government’s terrifying self-confidence.........."a story of what happens when Washington decides, in its infinite wisdom, that every living, breathing citizen should own a home.” The 1977 Community Reinvestment Act pressured banks to relax lending standards......... In 1994, Bill Clinton proposed increasing homeownership through a “partnership” between government and the private sector, principally orchestrated by Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae’s political machine dispensed campaign contributions, gave jobs to friends and relatives of legislators, hired armies of lobbyists (even paying lobbyists not to lobby against it), paid academics who wrote papers validating...

I am currently reading Reckless Endangerment by Gretchen Morgenson and Josh Rosner. I highly recommend it. This book names names, exposes policies and schemes, and will make you very mad with all of politics of the current economic mess. It documents the role of James Johnson and his tenure at the head of FNMA (Fannie Mae) in the 1990s, and his role in the housing price collapse/financial crisis of 2008. It focuses on James Johnson, Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), and Representative Barney Frank (D-MA). The book does an excellent job of explaining their roles, but does not elaborately discuss...

Subprime Scandal: With the housing market crashing again, the truth is finally dawning on some media elite that Washington played a bigger role in the mortgage mess than first told. A new book, "Reckless Endangerment," zeroes in on the corrupt partnership between Fannie Mae and Beltway insiders — who used the federally chartered firm as a giant slush fund to enrich themselves while pushing liberal housing schemes. This may be nothing new to our readers, who have read as much on these pages from the first days of the crisis. What's surprising here is the author — a New York...

Jonah rightly calls today’s David Brooks column a must-read. Brooks discusses Reckless Endangerment, the new book by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner exposing Fannie Mae’s role in the runup to the financial crisis. Brooks also rightly credits Michele Bachmann for her important role in publicizing a topic many other national politicians have been silent on. I’ve only had a chance to give Reckless Endangerment a quick look, but my impression is that it tells the right story, if a bit too much from Fannie Mae’s point of view. In Morgenson and Rosner’s telling, Fannie Mae effectively buys off ACORN and other...

Subprime Scandal: Turns out the true cost of bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is double what the White House claims. Yet reforming the failed mortgage giants remains in limbo. In a new report delivered to the House Budget Committee, the Congressional Budget Office puts the bailout figure at $317 billion — not the $130 billion claimed by the Obama administration, which has vowed to "reform" Fannie and Freddie. And CBO says costs to taxpayers will continue to rise as the housing market weakens. Why low-ball the bleeding from these quasi-governmental agencies? Because the White House doesn't really want...

Democrats, watch out. The Republican Party and especially its Tea Party wing have just acquired a new weapon of mass destruction — and it has nothing to do with any of Congressman Wiener’s rogue body parts. If they deploy this weapon effectively in the next election cycle — a big if — then they have the biggest opportunity to move the country rightward since Ronald Reagan took the oath of office back in 1981. The Tea Party WMD stockpile is currently stored in book form: Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon. By Gretchen Morgenson,...

Home prices began double-dipping months ago, but now that S&P/Case Shiller has chimed in, it really must be so. This report is the most widely-followed home price index, equally quoted in bank boardrooms, Treasury Department back rooms, and Congressional Committees. The report finds home prices in Q1 of this year are now 2.9 percent below the previous quarterly bottom in Q1 of 2009, effectively giving up all the gains of the past few years, which were of course fueled by the home buyer tax credit. ... So what about the banks? Sure, they took huge write-downs already, but there is...

Corruption: How is it that a GOP politico can get drummed out of the Senate for bathroom acts while Rep. Barney Frank merits not even a flicker of censure for economically disastrous cronyism? When will the double standard end? Two years after politically motivated mortgage lending triggered the biggest collapse since the Great Depression, House Finance Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., has been found to have helped one of his lovers, Herbie Moses, land a six-figure job at Fannie Mae, the agency at the center of the meltdown and one he had a responsibility to regulate. Instead of exerting oversight...

This week the debt ceiling "crisis" officially arrived, as the U.S. government reached the $14.3 trillion legal limit on how much it is allowed to borrow. In coming weeks, Congress will vote on whether to raise this limit, but the debate is unfolding as credit rating agencies are starting to question whether the U.S. can maintain its AAA debt rating. Absent significant legislative changes by Congress, the U.S. budget deficit will likely remain at elevated levels for the foreseeable future, even if the economy roars back to life. Policymakers are pressing for budget reforms designed to cut spending over the...

If you thought the housing crisis was bad, think again. It's worse. New data just out from Zillow, the real-estate information company, show house prices are falling at their fastest rate since the Lehman collapse. Average home prices are down 8% from a year ago, 3% over the quarter, and are falling at about 1% every month, according to Zillow. And the percentage of homeowners in negative-equity positions — with a home worth less than its mortgage — has rocketed to 28%, a new crisis high. Zillow now predicts prices will fall about 8% this year and says it no...

~ EXCERPT ~ WASHINGTON (AP) -- Mortgage buyer Fannie Mae reported a loss of $8.7 billion for the January-March quarter, and asked for an additional $8.5 billion in federal aid. The new request is more than three times the $2.6 billion in government aid it sought in the final three months of last year. The loss was caused by declining home prices around the country, Fannie Mae said. It said prices declined on average 1.8 percent, leading more homeowners to default on loans that the mortgage giant had guaranteed. The government rescued Fannie Mae and sibling company Freddie Mac in...

Fannie, Freddie Execs Get Big Bucks Despite Downturnby Sonari Glinton April 1, 2011 Sure the past year was a tough one for the millions of Americans who lost jobs or faced foreclosure, but at least some people did well. The top executives of bailed-out mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were paid very large salaries — without proper written procedures or analysis, according to an inspector general's report. MICHELE NORRIS, host: A new report out this week is criticizing the pay for top executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Those are the mortgage giants that were taken...

How might home buying change if the federal government shuts down the housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage loan, the steady favorite of American borrowers since the 1950s, could become a luxury product, housing experts on both sides of the political aisle say. Interest rates would rise for most borrowers, but urban and rural residents could see sharper increases than the coveted customers in the suburbs. Lenders could charge fees for popular features now taken for granted, like the ability to "lock in" an interest rate weeks or months before taking out a loan....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Mortgage buyer Fannie Mae has posted a loss of $2.1 billion for the October-December quarter of last year, and is asking for an additional $2.6 billion in federal aid. The new request is slightly more than the $2.5 billion it sought in the July-September quarter. The government-controlled mortgage buyer also reported a $21.7 billion loss for all of 2010. AND YOU CAN'T MISS THIS TOO Freddie Mac posts $1.7B loss for Q4asks for additional $500 million in aid

How unwilling is President Obama to truly rein in the growth of government? Consider his refusal to do anything about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Oh, Obama last week -- more than two years after the two mortgage giants were seized and placed into a federal conservatorship -- issued "recommendations" that would supposedly wind down the twins over a decade. Mind you, Fannie and Freddie have cost the taxpayers $160 billion in direct subsidies since they were taken over in August 2008. The country would be better off if they shut down today. Housing finance is incredibly simple to get...

The report delivered Friday by Geithner and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan presents three approaches for a future housing finance system. It also calls the government to shrink “and ultimately wind down” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the bailed-out government-sponsored enterprise companies that helped fuel the housing bubble before being felled by investments in subprime mortgages. “This is a plan for fundamental reform -- to wind down the GSEs, strengthen consumer protection and preserve access to affordable housing for people who need it,” Geithner said in a statement accompanying the report. The report also pledges ongoing U.S. government...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal taxpayers should stop propping up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and Congress will wean the country away from its reliance on the two huge but fiscally feeble housing finance companies, House Republicans said Wednesday. Democrats conceded that changes are needed in Fannie and Freddie, which have swallowed $150 billion in federal aid since the government took them over in September 2008. But they cautioned that care must be taken to avoid jeopardizing the popular 30-year fixed rate mortgage and the access to the housing market that the two companies have helped provide to millions of moderate-income...

President Obama will offer three plans to phase out the troubled home lending agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, an administration official said Tuesday night. The plans range from a full government guarantee of the housing market to removing nearly all federal backstops for housing loans, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The plans were first reported Tuesday night by The Wall Street Journal.

Late last week the Obama Administration does what it often does when it's about to announce something controversial: It leaks a little bit to the news media to soften the blow. And so it was with the highly-anticipated, and currently overdue, "white paper" on reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The paper is expected by the end of this week. As we have reported on this blog before, it will likely include several options and scenarios, playing each of them out to conclusion. We already know that the goal is to reduce the government's role in the mortgage market, which...

WASHINGTON — The 2008 financial crisis was an “avoidable” disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street, according to the conclusions of a federal inquiry. The commission that investigated the crisis casts a wide net of blame, faulting two administrations, the Federal Reserve and other regulators for permitting a calamitous concoction: shoddy mortgage lending, the excessive packaging and sale of loans to investors and risky bets on securities backed by the loans... While the panel, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, accuses several financial institutions of greed, ineptitude or both, some of its...

The 2008 financial crisis was an “avoidable” disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street, according to the conclusions of a Congressional inquiry. The government commission that investigated the financial crisis casts a wide net of blame, faulting two administrations, the Federal Reserve and other regulators for permitting a calamitous concoction: shoddy mortgage lending, the excessive packaging and sale of loans to investors, and risky bets on securities backed by the loans. < snip > ..... Many of the findings have been widely described, but its synthesis of interviews, documents and testimony,...

The chief executive of the privately-held Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, or MERS, is planning to leave the company and an announcement of his departure could come within days, according to people familiar with the matter. The company has been under fire by Congress and state officials for its role in the mortgage-document crisis. The firm's board has met in recent days to address the fate of the company and its chief executive, R.K. Arnold, people said. Mr. Arnold and other MERS officials didn't respond to requests for comment; a spokeswoman declined comment.

The Obama Administration is releasing its plan on the future of the housing finance industry. More specifically, they are releasing their plan on what to do with the mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Obama Administration's plan for housing finance will likely be short on details and long on government involvement in the housing and mortgage market. Remember, the Obama Administration is wedded to "Big Government" solutions, so any final form of FHA, Fannie and Freddie will likely be a reshuffling of the deck chairs on the Titanic rather than a sensible reconsideration of national housing policy. The...

Urbanists have won an important victory in their campaign to reverse Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s bias against mixed-use development, enlisting the National Association of Home Builders to help push for a critical reform to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s lending standards. The mortgage giants currently require that projects they finance be no more than 25 percent commercial (20 percent for Fannie and for multifamily HUD projects.) The Congress for the New Urbanism has waged a battle against these mandates. “Every Main Street in America violates Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s rigid standards,” CNU President John Norquist has said. According...

Link only - Fannie Mae regulators asked to justify Bank of America, Ally deals

Home values have fallen 26 percent since their peak in June 2006, worse than the 25.9-percent decline seen during the Depression years between 1928 and 1933, Zillow reported. November marked the 53rd consecutive month (4 ½ years) that home values have fallen.

The Republicans are back in charge in the House of Representatives this week, and not a moment too soon! Forget "stimulus" bills and "shovel-ready" bailouts (for public school teachers, who need shovels for what they're teaching), the current financial crisis, which is the second Great Depression, was created slowly and methodically by Democrat hacks running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the past 18 years. As even Obama's treasury secretary admitted in congressional hearings, "Fannie and Freddie were a core part of what went wrong in our system." And if it's something Tim Geithner noticed, it's probably something that's fairly...

INVESTIGATE THIS!by Ann CoulterJanuary 5, 2011The Republicans are back in charge in the House of Representatives this week, and not a moment too soon! Forget "stimulus" bills and "shovel-ready" bailouts (for public school teachers, who need shovels for what they're teaching), the current financial crisis, which is the second Great Depression, was created slowly and methodically by Democrat hacks running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the past 18 years. As even Obama's treasury secretary admitted in congressional hearings, "Fannie and Freddie were a core part of what went wrong in our system." And if it's something Tim Geithner...

Financial stocks just caught fire. Someone must be getting bailed out, right? Why yes, say critics of the giant banks. They charge that Monday's rally-stoking mortgage-putback deal between Bank of America (BAC) and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is nothing more than a backdoor bailout of the nation's largest lender. It comes courtesy, they say, of an administration struggling to find a fix for the housing market while quaking at the prospect of another housing-fueled banking meltdown. Monday's arrangement, according to this view, will keep the banks standing -- but leave taxpayers on the hook for an even bigger tab...

Rep. Darrell Issa is aiming to launch investigations on everything from WikiLeaks to Fannie Mae to corruption in Afghanistan in the first few months of what promises to be a high profile chairmanship of the top oversight committee in Congress. According to an outline of the committee’s hearing topics obtained by POLITICO, the House Oversight and Government Reform is also planning to investigate how regulation impacts job creation, the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the foreclosure crisis; recalls at the Food and Drug Administration and the failure of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to agree on the...

In the early 1990s, the biggest names in the mortgage industry hatched a plan for a new electronic clearinghouse that would transform the home loan business - and unlock billions of dollars of new investments and profits. At the time, mortgage documents were moved almost exclusively by hand and mail, a throwback to an era in which people kept stock certificates, too. That made it hard for banks to buy and sell packages of home loans to investors. By contrast, a central electronic clearinghouse would allow the companies to transfer thousands of mortgages instantaneously, greasing the wheels of a system...

The housing market has remained at the center of the nation's economic troubles throughout 2010. The housing market started the year flat on its back, and it's ending the year in nearly the same condition. Home sales are still depressed, home-building remains near a 50-year low, and home prices are still about 30 percent below their peak. Part of the problem this year has clearly been high unemployment. But the ongoing foreclosure crisis also keeps glutting the market with unsold homes. Meanwhile, the government's efforts to prevent foreclosures over the past year were a pretty big disappointment to many people....