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The Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit held a hearing today on “Examining How the Dodd-Frank Act Hampers Home Ownership.” The hearing was about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Qualified Mortgages (QM). The fear of Dodd-Frank and the CFPB is that the rules are so severe that it could hamper home ownership. Even though the current rate of home ownership remains above the 1994 rate of 64.2%. On May 29, 2013, the CFPB adopted a number of amendments to the QM rule that were proposed concurrently with the final rule in January. The amendments would (1) exempt...

President Obama will nominate Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC) today to be the Director of the Federal Finance Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). Many have called for the firing of the agency’s current director, Ed DeMarco. DeMarco has headed the agency since 2009 and was a Bush appointee. Watt’s nomination is subject to Senate confirmation. Watt played a key role in the he Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that is now law and has been an advocte for minority lending institutions. Watt is 67 and a graduate of Yale Law School. He has served in Congress since 1993 and...

A college student injured by the finish line during the first Boston Marathon blast wanted to thank an Afghanistan vet who helped calm her down in the aftermath. She only knew his first name, but, thanks to a plea from friends in high places, that was enough to find him. During his Tuesday afternoon news conference, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick spoke about meeting a Northeastern University student named Victoria who was being treated for serious shrapnel wounds at Tufts Medical Center.

It is time to close both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—the government-sponsored mortgage giants. Both entities distort the country’s housing finance market by issuing mortgage-backed securities with subsidized government guarantees that the mortgages will be repaid. If guarantees are necessary, they should be priced and issued by the private sector, not by the state. Financial institutions expert David C. John details specific steps to achieve this shutdown carefully and methodically without further upsetting the delicate housing market—and without making the situation worse.

I hate days like this when all economic indicators are negative. Retail sales and consumer confidence plunged. Mama said there’d be days like this. Not only did the University of Michigan Consumer Confidence plunge from 78.6 to 72.3, it plunged compared to an expectation of a 78.6 print. This was not only a 9 month low in the index, but more importantly the biggest miss to expectations since the index was created. Retail sales were down across the board, the biggest decline since June. Note that big swing and a miss versus the expectations of retail sales. Of course, energy...

http://www.countypressonline.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=2549&dept_id=514258&newsid=11351857&PAG=461&rfi=9 EditorialSecond Thoughts By: William W. Lawrence 04/20/2004The "powerful" Delaware County Republican machine is throwing its full support behind Arlen Specter. This "powerful" gang could not deliver the county for Dubya or his father. Let's make certain they cannot do it for Specter.All real Republicans should vote for Pat Toomey.***So George Soros, an anti-American, anti-Bush billionaire, is funding Arlen Specter's senate campaign and has been a Specter supporter since 1996. Let's send the "powerful" Delco GOP machine and Soros a message. Vote Pat Toomey, Tuesday.***Remember Rick Santorum and Dubya have to support Specter. It's not as though they want to....

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- Members of a black leadership group are asking Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) to resign from his position in the United States Senate because of recent comments he made regarding Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV). Talon News was one of the few national media outlets that reported on this story last week about Dodd's remarks about Byrd made on the floor of the Senate on April 1 (read previous story). "I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia that he would have been a great senator at any...

WASHINGTON, April 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Members of the African- American leadership network Project 21 are asking U.S. Senator Christopher J. Dodd to resign his seat in the wake of inappropriate comments he made commemorating fellow senator Robert C. Byrd's 17,000th Senate vote. Senator Dodd said: "I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia that he would have been a great senator at any moment. Some were right for a time. Robert C. Byrd, in my view, would have been right for any time." "How could Senator Dodd have made...

The House Ethics Committee has decided to close its investigation into preferential mortgages doled out under a controversial VIP program without taking any action. The panel said it was not taking any action on members who received more affordable mortgages under the program, instituted by the now-defunct Countrywide Financial because while allegations surrounding the program and lawmakers involved "serious matters," they largely fell outside its jurisdiction. For example, many of the allegations pertain to actions outside the Ethics Committee's statute of limitations — greater than three Congresses ago — and many of those accused are no longer working in Congress...

When hacktivist Jeremy Hammond was arrested last week in Chicago as a part of a wide government investigation in the online group Anonymous, his mother, Rose Collins, called him a genius without any wisdom. “Again?” she asked when informed by the Chicago Tribune that her son had been arrested for hacking. “I love my son, but he is a genius with no brain. He has a 168 IQ, but he has no wisdom.”  In an attempt to educate the world at-large about the dangers of Anonymous, Rose Collins reached out to Townhall Finance and spoke about Jeremy and Anonymous. She ended by asking a...

There can be unseemly exposure of the mind as well as of the body, as the progressive mind is exposed in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a creature of the labyrinthine Dodd-Frank legislation. Judicial dismantling of the CFPB would affirm the rule of law and CongressÂ’s constitutional role. The CFPBÂ’s director, Richard Cordray, was installed by one of Barack ObamaÂ’s spurious recess appointmentswhen the Senate was not in recess. Vitiating the SenateÂ’s power to advise and consent to presidential appointments is congruent with the CFPBÂ’s general lawlessness. The CFPB nullifies CongressÂ’s power to use the power of the purse...

The American Civil Liberties Union sued Morgan Stanley on Monday, charging the Wall Street firm discriminated against African-American homeowners and violated federal civil rights laws by providing funding for risky mortgages. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in New York, is the first that connects racial discrimination to the process of bundling subprime loans into mortgage-backed bonds that were then sold to institutional investors and pension funds. The lawsuit was filed behalf of five Detroit residents, and asks the court to certify the case as a class action. It argues as many as 6,000 black homeowners in the Detroit...

One year ago today, the Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act went into effect. Designed to protect consumers from high fees on debit card transactions, the new rules inadvertently put an end to free checking as we knew it. After the new rules kicked in, the banks started looking for ways to make up for the lost revenue, experimenting with $5 monthly changes on low balance checking accounts and other maintenance fees.In honor of this inauspicious anniversary, John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute writes: According to the just-released annual survey of Bankrate.com, only 39...

Hijacking the Financial Sector: The Dodd–Frank statute represents a regulatory hijacking of the financial sector, spanning 2,300 pages delineating at least 400 separate rulemakings by 11 federal agencies. Doesn’t Fix the Problem: Most of the provisions of the act have little or no connection to the financial crisis that provided the excuse for their creation. More Bailouts, Not Less: Dodd–Frank does not end bailouts to big banks. Under the act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is permitted to purchase the assets of a failing firm, guarantee the obligations of a failing firm, take a security interest in the assets of...

Do you remember that thing about how the banks wouldn't lend to blacks and Hispanics because they were racists? And do you remember how they passed the Community Reinvestment Act so that banks were forced to reduce down payments practically to zero and lend to a lot of people they knew were bad credit risks? And do you remember how Wall Street bundled all these risky subprime mortgage and sold them to investors around the world so that when it became clear that those people weren't going to be able to pay their mortgages banks everywhere were left holding the...

The former Countrywide Financial Corp., whose subprime loans helped start the nation's foreclosure crisis, made hundreds of discount loans to buy influence with members of Congress, congressional staff, top government officials and executives of troubled mortgage giant Fannie Mae, according to a House report.

A Texas community bank and two advocacy groups are filing suit in U.S. District Court to challenge the constitutionality of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. In particular, the suit will contend that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), created by the law, lacks sufficient checks and balances and, in the words of the CEO of State National Bank, is "simply unconstitutional." “No other federal agency or commission operates in such a way that one person can essentially determine who gets a home loan, who can get a credit card and who can get a loan for college,” said bank head...

Emigrant Bank was recently identified to receive a waiver that would allow the bank to opt out of rigorous Dodd-Frank requirements. These of course are the same new rules and regulations that Barack deems essential to the nation. Yet when the bank’s owner, Howard Milstein, who is a close friend and was a bundler for President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, protested that the new rules would seriously crimp operations of his bank, the Obama Administration worked with members of congress to grant him a waiver from the new rules. Other financial institutions and banks have consistently and vehemently argued that...

Regulators have a July deadline to finish the rule, but officials have said it appears unlikely they will meet it. The October draft rule issued by the Fed, the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators permits what is known as "portfolio hedging," or buying and selling in order to reduce the risk of a portfolio of securities held at the bank. Messrs. Merkley and Levin say regulators inserted a "loophole" into the rule's draft. The Dodd-Frank law says banks can conduct hedging activities related to "individual or aggregated positions." It is unclear whether that includes buying or selling to...

UNITED NATIONS — A former Nicaraguan foreign minister who once called President Ronald Reagan “the butcher of my people” has been appointed to represent Libya at the United Nations after its delegate was denied a visa, the Nicaraguan government said on Wednesday. Nicaragua said the former minister, Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, 78, an outspoken critic of the United States and a Catholic priest, would replace the Libyan diplomat Ali Abdussalam Treki, who had been unable to obtain a visa to enter the United States. Libya’s ambassador to the United Nations, Abdurrahman Mohamed Shalgam, defected in late February after denouncing Col. Muammar...