Free Republic

The title of the WSJ’s Nick Timiraos article couldn’t be more ironic: “Economist Eyed for Fannie Watchdog.” It is ironic in a couple of ways. First, Zandi has no regulatory experience (as far as I know). Second, he is on record touting every government loan modification and principal reduction program. See, for example, his New York Times editorial with Joseph Stiglitz. The current FHFA Acting Director, Edward DeMarco, has been a champion of shrinking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s footprint in the market and consolidating their operations. According to Timiraos: Without clear direction from the White House or Congress, Mr....

Jon Prior at Politico reports that according to budget projections released Wednesday, taxpayers could see “a $51 billion profit on the $187 billion in federal funds that have been pumped into” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “since they were taken over by the government in 2008.” The catch? Fannie and Freddie would have to remain under government control for another 10 years. Wait a minute. If taxpayers spent $187 to bailout Fannie and Freddie, a $51 billion profit over ten years still leaves taxpayers in the hole for $136 billion. Politico is making it sound like a tremendous return on...

Jon Prior at Politico reports that according to budget projections released Wednesday, taxpayers could see “a $51 billion profit on the $187 billion in federal funds that have been pumped into” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “since they were taken over by the government in 2008.” The catch? Fannie and Freddie would have to remain under government control for another 10 years. Wait a minute. If taxpayers spend $187 to bailout Fannie and Freddie, a $51 billion profit over ten years still leaves taxpayers in the hole for $136 billion. Politico is making it sound like a tremendous return on...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) today released its January 2013 Refinance Report, which shows that refinance volume remained high through the first month of this year. There were nearly 470,000 refinances in January, with roughly 97,600 completed through the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). This brings total HARP refinances to more than 2.2 million since the program’s inception in April 2009. • Borrowers in January with loan-to-value ratios greater than 105 percent accounted for 47 percent of the HARP refinance volume. • The number of completed HARP refinances for deeply underwater borrowers continued to represent a significant portion of...

Administration Encouraging Banks To Approve Riskier Mortgages Here we go again. This is reminiscent of Clinton/Cisneros/Cuomo’s National Homeownership Strategy that help almost destroy the banking system and left millions of households in foreclosure: nhsdream2 According to the Washington Post (4/2, Goldfarb, 489K),the Administration “is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place.” The Post adds that “administration officials say they...

Realty Trac reported last week that 300,000 homes in the US are zombies. And another 10.9 million homeowners nationwide remain at risk because they owe more than their property is worth (better known as negative equity). “While Florida leads in volume of zombie properties, Kentucky, with less than 1,000 zombie properties, leads in percentage, with zombies representing 54 percent of its total foreclosure inventory. Zombies in Washington, Indiana, Nevada and Oregon also constitute 50 percent or more of the properties in foreclosure, according to the report.” Wait a minute! How can this be true when we have 15 Federal government...

Realty Trac reported last week that 300,000 homes in the US are zombies. And another 10.9 million homeowners nationwide remain at risk because they owe more than their property is worth (better known as negative equity). “While Florida leads in volume of zombie properties, Kentucky, with less than 1,000 zombie properties, leads in percentage, with zombies representing 54 percent of its total foreclosure inventory. Zombies in Washington, Indiana, Nevada and Oregon also constitute 50 percent or more of the properties in foreclosure, according to the report.” Wait a minute! How can this be true when we have 15 Federal government...

"The biggest problem with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is that they are financial institutions with a social mission," said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste. That social mission, critics say, is to heavily subsidize mortgages for people who don't meet sound lending qualifications. "Lower income homes have a tougher time paying mortgages and when the housing market started to go under, that was the first to go," Schatz said.

The economy is improving (at long last). Durable goods order surprised to the upside with a print of 5.7% SA. But the YoY NSA durable goods orders seems to be in a decline. And the housing market continues to exhibit price increases. The S&P Case-Shiller house price index rose 1.02% in January on a seasonally adjusted basis (SA). On a non seasonally adjusted basis, house prices rose only 0.1%. When we remove the seasonal adjustment, house prices nationally seem to be flat since the end of 2008 with some undulations. The big winners in January? The sand states where investors...

The government sponsored enterprises in conservatorship, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are generating attention in Congress. For example, here are recent headlines (courtesy of WilmerHale). * Corker and Warren Unite on GSE Reform. Here is their bill. • As described in the Bipartisan Policy Center’s executive summary, the BPC plan would replace Fannie and Freddie with a new government entity that would insure qualifying MBS with an explicit government guarantee that would kick in only if mandatory private credit enhancement, e.g., private mortgage insurance, failed to reimburse credit losses on the re-insured MBS. • FHFA Acting Director DeMarco previously announced...

BE afraid. That’s the takeaway for both investors and taxpayers in the 307-page Senate report detailing last year’s $6.2 billion trading fiasco at JPMorgan Chase. The financial system, thanks to dissembling traders and bumbling regulators, is at greater risk than you know. After bailing out the nation’s banking system in 2008, taxpayers and investors have been assured that such a crisis will not happen again. The Dodd-Frank legislation was supposed to make our system safe from the kinds of reckless banking activities... --SNIP-- But the true value in this Senate investigation is its spotlight on the ability of bank executives...

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) released their application indices this morning. In a nutshell, mortgage applications fell -4.68% from the previous week. Purchase applications fell -2.53% and are at 1997 levels as the big push for homeownership from the Clinton Administration was starting. Refinancing applications fell -5.21%. They rose the previous week as mortgage rates started rising, but have cooled off this week. In fact, you can see a trend of decline in refi applications from last September. Mortgage rates have been trending up since October of last year. In refi news, the FHFA released a report showing that Home...

<p>Bloomberg/Businessweek has an interesting article on the upcoming “bipartisan” panel entitled “Limited Mortgage Finance Role for U.S. Government Gains Support”.</p>

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants in conservatorship, played their “Get out of jail free” card and are letting some borrowers wipe out negative equity on their homes. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will let some borrowers who kept up payments as their homes lost value erase their debts by giving up the properties, helping Americans escape underwater loans while adding to losses at the mortgage giants bailed out with $190 billion of taxpayer money. Non-delinquent borrowers with illness, job changes or other reasons they need to move will become eligible in March to apply for a so-called...

What is your prediction on mortgage spreads after the private sector almost vanished by 2008? The red line denotes non-GSE market share and the green line denotes GSE market share (e.g., Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc.). The government essentially became a monopolist (although the government entities including the FHA compete with each other for market share). There are barriers to entry that would promote competition with Uncle Sam – it is called Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Financial Bureau. The vast majority of residential mortgages will continue to be purchase and/or insured by the Federal government. But after the effective nationalization...

According to data gathered by the Federal Housing Finance Administration (FHFA), the government mortgage enterprises (mostly Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) averaged 30% risky loan purchases from 2001-2008. My definition of risky loan is 1) FICO score 80%. This table is just for fixed-rate mortgages. Notice that Enterprise purchases peaked in 2003, but the percentage of risky purchases rose from 27.43% in 2005 to 36.79% in 2007. In terms of 90 day delinquencies, the risky loans fared worse than less risky loans. The yellow/orange cells are the worse, blue cells are the best. Of course, we know that government housing...

Policy-wise, this is an oldie but a goodie, I guess, even though we’re still spending tons of money on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae more than four years after the crash. Wells Fargo CEO Robert Kovacevich can't believe that we haven't learned the lesson from 2008 and gotten the government out of the home mortgage industry, and tells CNBC's Squawk Box that the two organizations made that crash exponentially worse than it needed to be: CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exacerbated the 2008 mortgage crisis, and that’s why the U.S. government should get out...

Bank of American had a bad day. First, they were a party to the latest government refinancing program (the $10 billion dollar foreclosure abuse settlement). Second, Bank of America has settled with mortgage giant Fannie Mae. WASHINGTON — Bank of America Corp. said Monday it had agreed to pay more than $10 billion to Fannie Mae to settle claims related to troubled mortgages sold largely by Countrywide Financial Corp. during the subprime housing boom. First of all, it was a housing boom, not just a subprime housing boom. Second, the government mortgage giants Fannie Mae knew that a large percentage...

The radio show “Marketplace” wanted to chat this morning about the news that the Obama administration might extend its mortgage-refinancing programs to include borrowers whose mortgages aren’t backed by the government. It’s one thing for the Administration to pressure loan modifications (with Congress’ blessing) for the FHA insured mortgages. It is even a bigger stretch for the Administration to pressure Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and FHFA to perform loan modifications (specifically principal writedowns since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are private corporations … in conservatorship. But it quite another thing for the Administration to pressure non-government entities to make principal...

In his early activist days, Barack Obama the community organizer sued banks to ease lending practices... During his time as a community organizer Barack Obama led several protests against banks to make loans to high risk individuals. ... A new study by the respected National Bureau of Economic Research found that Democrats are to blame for the subprime mortgage crisis. ... Republicans warned Democrats of the impending doom in 2004.