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On December 29th, 2011, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) acting director Edward Demarco released a statement detailing the increase to the guarantee fee charged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as part of the Temporary Payroll Tax Cut Continuation Act of 2011. As part of the legislation, FHFA is increasing the guarantee fee by no less than 10 basis points (bp), effective April 1st, 2012. This increase affects all single-family residential mortgages, and the additional 10 bp in fees will be remitted to the U.S. Treasury instead of being retained by the GSEs. Additionally, the minimum initial increase shall...

<p>At the CNN Florida Republican Presidential debate in Jacksonville on January 26th, Governor Romney attempted to link Speaker Newt Gingrich to the 2007 Housing Crisis by questioning the Speaker’s role as a consultant at the troubled mortgage giant Freddie Mac. He made the same connection in the NBC debate on January 23rd. Governor Romney claimed in the debates that Speaker Gingrich peddled his influence in Washington D.C. to promote Freddie Mac when he should have been blowing the whistle on the government-sponsored entities' practices.</p>

In response to lobbying accusations from his opponents Newt Gingrich told me it would be "very helpful" if his former company, Center for Health Transformation, released the consulting contract he had with mortgage giant Freddie Mac before the Florida primary on January 31. "I think it would be very helpful and our attorneys are talking with the company. You know I left the company so, it's their decision and Nancy Desmond, the president of the company, has to make the decision. But I'd be very comfortable releasing them," he said.

.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who's Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a Reuters inquiry shows. The firm, Covington & Burling, is one of Washington's biggest white shoe law firms. Law professors and other federal ethics experts said that federal conflict of interest rules required Holder and Breuer to recuse themselves from any Justice Department decisions relating to law firm clients they personally had done work for.

Former Fannie Mae executive Ed Pinto, who worked at the mortgage giant before it began buying up risky mortgages, has also described Fannie Mae’s key role in buying up and promoting risky sub-prime mortgages, which Fannie Mae did on a large scale, despite having a capital cushion that was tiny compared to private banks, resulting in its later insolvency and massive taxpayer bailout. A recent book about the causes of the crisis by New York Times business reporter Gretchen Morgenson and financial analyst Josh Rosner, “Reckless Endangerment,” chronicles how “it was Fannie Mae and the government housing policies it supported,...

Media propagandists continue to advance the Democratic Party line. On December 21, Bloomberg News breathlessly reported, "The leading Republican candidates for president have embraced an explanation of the financial crisis that has been rejected by the chairman of the Federal Reserve, many economists and even three of the four Republicans on the government commission that investigated the meltdown." Reporter David J. Lynch further explained, "Both former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney lay much of the blame on U.S. government housing policies, saying they led to the real estate crash that almost brought down the banking...

The U.S. government-run mortgage finance firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could play a bigger role in turning around the battered U.S. housing market, the Federal Reserve told Congress, a call that looks set to run into stiff political opposition. The Fed, in a paper sent to lawmakers on Wednesday, outlined an array of steps that could be taken to help the housing sector, including allowing Fannie and Freddie to provide cheaper mortgages to a broader pool of homeowners. The two companies, the biggest sources of U.S. mortgage funding, were seized by the government in 2008 when they were on...

Democrats have spent years arguing that private lenders created the housing boom and bust, and that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac merely came along for the ride. This was always a politically convenient fiction, and now thanks to the unlikely source of the Securities and Exchange Commission we have a trail of evidence showing how the failed mortgage giants turbocharged the crisis. That's the story revealed Friday by the SEC's civil lawsuits against six former Fannie and Freddie executives, including a pair of CEOs. The SEC says the companies defrauded investors because they "knew and approved of misleading statements" about...

DECEMBER 17, 2011 Gingrich of Freddie Mac The Speaker's defense is hurting him as much as his $1.6 million payday. Newt Gingrich's opponents aren't letting up in their criticism of his lucrative ties to the failed mortgage giant Freddie Mac after he resigned as House Speaker in the late 1990s. More damaging to his Presidential candidacy is that Mr. Gingrich doesn't seem to understand why anyone is offended. In his first response after news broke that he'd made $300,000 working for Freddie, Mr. Gingrich claimed he had "offered them advice on precisely what they didn't do." As a "historian," he...

WASHINGTON -- The Securities and Exchange Commission has brought civil fraud charges against six former top executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying they misled the government and taxpayers about risky subprime mortgages the mortgage giants held during the housing bust. Those charged include the agencies' two former CEOs, Fannie's Daniel Mudd and Freddie's Richard Syron. They are the highest-profile individuals to be charged in connection with the 2008 financial crisis. Mudd, 53, and Syron, 68, led the mortgage giants when the housing bubble burst in late 2006 and 2007. The four other top executives also worked for the...

NEW YORK—The Securities and Exchange Commission sued several former executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, including their former chief executives, alleging they misrepresented to investors their exposure to subprime mortgage loans.

The Fannie model worked for over 50 years. And the Freddie Model worked for decades.

The government has pulled roughly even with the private sector as a source of home mortgages and consumer credit, with both financing $6.4 trillion in outstanding loans last quarter, Federal Reserve data show. This represents a dramatic reversal from 2006, when private-sector financing supplied nearly $2 in outstanding home mortgages and consumer credit for every $1 of government-financed loans.

"Barney Frank: I've destroyed the economy, my work here is done." — Washington Times headline, Nov. 29 It was quite a confluence of news last week when in the span of hours came Rep. Frank's retirement announcement, a report on declining housing prices and home-ownership rates, and a poll belaboring the obvious about Americans' fears about the housing and stock markets. With his fellow Democrat, former Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Rep. Frank, D-Mass., shoulders much of the blame for today's economic catastrophe and the fiscal crises plaguing governments at all levels. They spent years pushing policies that ultimately required...

The folks at Club for Growth has white papers on all the GOP candidates summarizing their public records and does a pretty objective job. Looking at Newt's I really was struck by how conservative Newt's actual voting record was (which of course was mischaracterized by Jennifer Rubin, who I think must have been offered a post in a Romney administration. How else do you explain her going full spittle in support of Romney and anti-Newt?)., with most of the worrisome aspects of his record coming from speeches AFTER he left public office. This is pretty much the exact opposite of...

No excerpt allowed from Bloomberg, story here .

I was only 15 in 1994, when Newt Gingrich experienced his last great moment. (Well, before this one, where he’s surging in the polls, with his campaign having figured out how to run for President.) So I don’t really remember Newt’s glory days. I have interviewed him on many occasions, however, as far back as 2006 and as recently as last month, and every time we talk, I’m struck by how smart he is. Despite that, I can’t get past the nagging voice in my head telling me that no matter how good he would be at running the country,...

I can’t understand why Newt Gingrich is getting such a pass on his Freddie Mac consulting. He claims to have been a historian for this outfit? FHLMC needs a historian like the U.S.A. needs a Department of Education, like Europe needs a common currency, like … like … I dunno, like Michelle Obama needs another $12,000 accessory. I sputtered about this on last week’s Radio Derb: Newt’s trying to ju-jitsu the thing, telling us that his experience as a shill for Freddie Mac gave him valuable insider understanding of governmental affairs. Isn’t that what we want in a candidate, valuable...

The real cause of the housing bubble and collapse is very simple: An Executive Order by Bill Clinton and enthusiastically championed by George Bush, 13166, forced banks to make bad loans or no loans at all. And Newt Gingrich was championing putting an end to EO 13166 years before the collapse of the banking industry. In the late 1990s, a grand compromise was reached between President Clinton and Senate Banking Chairman Phil Gramm. Long ago, government types decided that home ownership was the key to fiscal stability, but too many blacks didn't qualify for loans. The banking industry argued that...

It took a $142 billion taxpayer bailout to convince the Obama Administration to pledge in February to wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, rein in the Federal Housing Administration and encourage the revival of a private mortgage market. So it's distressing to see Congress move in exactly the opposite direction less than a year later, with the quiet approval of the White House. While cable TV is chasing the trivia of Fannie and Freddie bonuses, the real news is that late Monday a bipartisan Congressional committee announced an agreement to increase FHA's maximum mortgage limits to $729,750 from $625,500...

Especially since Mr. Gingrich was never a natural Freddie antagonist anyway. As big-government libertarian, he rather liked the idea of subsidizing homeownership. He also collected millions from health-care interests, and he supported a version of the individual health insurance mandate. These were once respectable ideas in GOP circles. Yet the inconvenient fact remains: Mr. Gingrich had placed himself, from the perspective of 2011, on the wrong side of the housing policy debate.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is stepping up his defense of his lucrative consulting career, in part by arguing that he didn’t do very much to earn all that money. In an interview late Thursday on Fox News, Gingrich said that he only worked about an hour a month giving advice to Freddie Mac, the quasi-public mortage company that paid him up to $1.8 million in fees.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Thursday that he's trying to figure out how much money he made from controversial housing giant Freddie Mac and suggested he may release the information as early as Friday. Gingrich's comments, in an interview with Fox News' Greta Van Susteren, represent the latest shift in his campaign's response to a Bloomberg News story earlier this week that said the former House speaker made as much as $1.6 million from Freddie. Initially, the Gingrich campaign promised to release details about the payment, then appeared to back off that pledge. Freddie Mac and its sister quasi-governmental...

Newt Gingrich spent the last decade being paid by big business to convince conservatives to support big-government policies that would profit his clients. Gingrich's consulting firm racked up $1.6 million in fees from the government-sponsored enterprise Freddie Mac, we learned this week from Bloomberg News. Gingrich's job was to help Freddie Mac win over conservatives to this market-distorting, bubble-fueling, housing-subsidy entity, which is now officially owned by the federal government. We also know that Growth Energy, an ethanol lobby, paid $312,500 to the Gingrich Group in 2009, according to the group's tax filing. Growth Energy lobbies to preserve many ethanol...

Rep. Michele Bachmann hit former Speaker Newt Gingrich hard on Wednesday for receiving consulting fees from mortgage giant Freddie Mac, but it turns out Bachmann herself received campaign contributions from The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation’s (Freddie Mac) political action committee during the 2007-2008 cycle. “While [Gingrich] was taking that money, I was fighting against Fannie and Freddie,” Bachmann said on Wednesday. It turns out that while she was “fighting” them, she was also taking their money.

I mean, he was the picture of righteous indignation. But when it comes to the millions of dollars in compensation, regular and bonus, paid to executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two Government-Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) that were at the very center of the sub-prime mortgage-bundling that poisoned the financial system and took down companies such as AIG, Obama’s outrage is… strangely mute. (SNIP) And yet now, instead of being spun-off as wholly private enterprises or just shut down, and while they are still being bailed out by billions in taxpayer dollars, their executives are being rewarded with tens...

Newt Gingrich has taken the lead in PPP's national polling. He's at 28% to 25% for Herman Cain and 18% for Mitt Romney. The rest of the Republican field is increasingly looking like a bunch of also rans: Rick Perry is at 6%, Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul at 5%, Jon Huntsman at 3%, and Gary Johnson and Rick Santorum each at 1%.

Now that Rick Perry and Herman Cain are seeing their stars fade, at least among the pundit class that shapes the popular news, some political observers are speculating that Newt Gingrich could be the next conservative hope for President. In the CNBC Republican Debate on Wednesday evening in MIchigan, Wall Street Journal Editorial writer John Harwood asked Newt Gingrich about his former consultant relationship with the mortgage facilitator Freddie Mac. Conservatives and Libertarians blame the Federal Government for the housing crisis that hit in 2007 and continues today. They believe the Federal Government created the housing bubble by mandating that...

The collapse of MF Global Holdings gives Americans yet another reason not to trust Wall Street. The firm filed for bankruptcy as federal regulators were looking for $600 million missing from customer accounts. Its CEO, former Democratic New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, had bet that European leaders would bail out smallish countries that were too big to fail. His bet did not pay off. The only good news out of this story is that Washington won't be bailing out MF Global. Corzine said he won't take a reported $12 million in severance. If he truly wants to atone, then Corzine...

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...

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...

The protesters have been sold a bill of goods. Reckless government policies, not private greed, brought about the housing bubble and resulting financial crisis. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> There is no mystery where the Occupy Wall Street movement came from: It is an offspring of the same false narrative about the causes of the financial crisis that exculpated the government and brought us the Dodd-Frank Act. According to this story, the financial crisis and ensuing deep recession was caused by a reckless private sector driven by greed and insufficiently regulated. It is no wonder that people who hear this tale repeated endlessly in...

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...

Freddie Mercury Day - on what would have been the Queen singer's 65th birthday - has been celebrated with a new Google doodle on the web giant's homepage. In the animated Google Doodle, Mercury is shown singing on stage in front of screaming fans, sat on a throne wearing a crown and dressed as a woman, and strutting about with a hoover. The accompanying video, over 90 seconds long, is set to 1978 Queen hit Don't Stop Me Now. Queen guitarist Brian May, writing on a special Google blog, said: "Freddie would have been 65 this year, and even though...

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...

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...

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...

“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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

WASILLA — When members of Wasilla High School’s symphonic jazz choir heard Friday it wouldn’t be singing the popular Queen hit “Bohemian Rhapsody” at this year’s graduation ceremony after working on it all year, the students couldn’t get their heads around it. WHS Principal Dwight Probasco reportedly had received complaints from at least one parent that the 1975 hit written by Freddie Mercury wasn’t appropriate for the ceremony simply because Mercury was gay. “The whole thing was just ridiculous,” senior Rachel Clark said Monday. “They’d played the song on the school intercom and we played it at prom.” Choir member...

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....

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...