Study: GSE Conservatorships Don’t Comply With HERA
February 13, 2015
The Federal Housing Finance Agency is not fulfilling its statutory responsibility to preserve Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in conservatorship, according to a legal analysis by former government officials. The GSE conservatorships, particularly under the current arrangement that siphons off nearly all of their earnings, violates the terms of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, said Michael Krimminger and Mark Calabria. Krimminger was formerly an expert on bank receiverships at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and Calabria was a Republican staffer at the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee when HERA was being drafted and enacted. Their paper argues that crippling Fannie and Freddie by preventing them from rebuilding capital is exactly the opposite of the way...