News Topic: Housing finance reform

Supporters of an unreleased bill to revamp the housing finance system say the plan strikes a middle ground that can gain support from both sides of the aisle. ... Read full article

The Community Home Lenders Association sent a letter to the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday laying out its priorities for GSE reform. ... Read full article

An exclusive look at the Senate's tightly held housing finance plan drew the most interest from readers this week, while TD's foray into AI and the roller coaster at CFPB also dominated attention. ... Read full article

Senate negotiators are working on a bill that would place Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into receivership and replace them with multiple mortgage guarantors, according to sources. ... Read full article

Craig Phillips, a top aide to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, said his department "broadly" agrees with the FHFA plan, which would return Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the private market and provide them an explicit government guarantee. ... Read full article

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. ... Read full article

Of the more than 30 GOP lawmakers due to retire at yearend - a historically significant level of departures for a single election - several are important to banking policy. ... Read full article

House Republicans are exiting Congress in droves ahead of the 2018 midterm elections and the stakes for the financial services industry could be significant. ... Read full article

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. ... Read full article

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. ... Read full article

A regulatory relief package is likely to come out of the Senate in the new year, and lawmakers could follow it up with a housing finance reform push. But the midterm election could cause some reform initiatives to grind to a halt. ... Read full article

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. ... Read full article

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. ... Read full article

The government-sponsored enterprises are at the heart of our housing finance problems, not the solutions. ... Read full article

For decades, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac helped working-class Americans get mortgages. That essential and powerful role in the national economy is fading. ... Read full article

The House Financial Services Committee began consideration of 14 bills on Tuesday, including one that would stop Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from being released by the government and another hailed as helping the underbanked in rural areas. ... Read full article

For the second week in a row, the CFPB's leadership shakeout dominated readers' attention, while a regional banker discussed efforts to fight hacking and the impact of the tax cuts, and bitcoin's price soared. ... Read full article

Until recently, there was a consensus among policymakers that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac needed to be eliminated. That changed this week. Here's why. ... Read full article