FHA Finances a Wake Up Call for Return to Roots And an Overhaul of Government Housing Finance?
November 29, 2012
The recent actuarial report that showed the FHA’s insurance fund is underwater to the tune of $16.3 billion ought to sound an alarm for policymakers to refocus the agency on its original public mission, some leading policy experts say, and perhaps even motivate them to resolve Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac while they’re at it. “I think FHA’s financial condition is extremely precarious – much worse than FHA and HUD are making it out to be,” said long-time critic Edward Pinto, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, DC, and a former official at Fannie Mae. As he sees it, today’s very low interest rate environment means the economic value of FHA’s forward mortgage fund really is a far worse at a negative $31 billion. “And when you throw in the negative on the reverse [mortgage] program, you get close to $35 billion.” Compounding the problem is...
Some SWFs in other countries have extensive ownership interests in major corporations and sweep much of their profits into state coffers.
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