FHFA Director Mel Watt said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be reincorporated as private entities and the government must provide an explicit guarantee for catastrophic losses in the secondary mortgage market.
Cryptocurrencies continue to pique the interest of our readers, with a warning on bitcoin taking the top spot and a story about Ripple's partnership with MoneyGram doing well. Housing finance reform, Wells Fargo and the CFPB also featured.
The Senate Banking Committee is expected to soon release a bipartisan bill that would significantly reshape the housing finance market, but key issues – and whether whatever legislation it produces can be squared with other players – remain unclear.
The GSEs are on their way to paying back the money they owed the government under the original bailout deal made at the height of the financial crisis, making 2018 an opportune time for an overhaul of the housing finance market.
The announcement Thursday that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt agreed to let Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac each build a $3 billion capital buffer avoided a potential crisis.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be allowed to build capital buffers to protect against losses under an agreement between the Treasury Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency announced on Thursday.
The two government-sponsored enterprises have relied on the “classic” FICO credit scoring model for the past 12 years. But the Federal Housing Finance Agency is weighing whether the GSEs should upgrade to more recent scoring alternatives.
