The House Financial Services Committee this week approved by voice vote a bill that would provide flexibility to adjust FHA premiums and pursue lender indemnifications more aggressively. H.R. 4264, the FHA Emergency Fiscal Solvency Act of 2012, differed slightly from the controversial initial draft the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Insurance, Housing and Community Opportunity passed on Feb. 7, according to the bill’s author, Rep. Judy Biggert, R-IL. The modified bill, she said, includes the tools the administration needs to ensure the FHA’s financial soundness and lower taxpayer liability. The...

Nearly two months after the House and Senate overwhelmingly voted to curtail bonus payments to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives, congressional lawmakers last week approved a final bill to send to the president’s desk for signature. Among the amendments included in the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012 – which would bar members of Congress and staffers from using non-public, inside information for personal benefit – are prohibitions on bonus payments to top executives of the two government-sponsored enterprises while they remain in conservatorship. The STOCK Act also...

Mounting fears that student loan debt will lead the way to the next credit crisis and legislative proposals to deal with those concerns appear to be having relatively little impact on the student loan ABS market, where new issuance has held fairly steady since the financial crisis. According to Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts, the spreads for student loan ABS are attractive enough to “turn more positive on (the) private student loan sector.” New issuance of private student loan ABS fell off sharply following the financial crisis. Investors demanded higher risk premiums, said Jonathan...

A Senate subcommittee chairman has called upon the Federal Housing Finance Agency to recalculate and resubmit its principal reduction analysis to account for the Obama administration’s proposed enhanced incentives after an expert testified last week about a number of flaws in the study the FHFA used to justify its policy stance against writedowns of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, called for the FHFA do-over during a hearing of the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Housing Transportation and Community Development, where Amherst Securities’ Laurie Goodman said there...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives will take home significantly less compensation during 2012, even as staffers at the taxpayer-subsidized companies will be monetarily rewarded for hitting performance goals – though they won’t be called bonuses – under a new plan unveiled late last week by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The FHFA’s 2012 executive compensation program reduces top executive pay at the government-sponsored enterprises by nearly 75 percent from pre-conservatorship levels, while it totally eliminates bonuses and establishes a “six-figure” pay target for the executive positions...

The House Ways and Means Committee this week extended until March 30, 2012, the period of time in which it can consider legislation that would lay the legal and regulatory foundation for a covered bonds market in the U.S. H.R. 940, the United States Covered Bond Act of 2011, was introduced March 8, 2011, by Rep. Scott Garrett, R-NJ, and reported out of the House Financial Services Committee on June 22, then referred to Ways and Means for consideration of its potential effect on the federal budget. Late last month, the Congressional Budget Office issued a cost estimate of the legislation. “CBO...

A month after Congress voted to curtail bonus payments conferred to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives, lawmakers have yet to close the deal and send a final bill to the president’s desk for signature. In early February, both the House and Senate overwhelmingly approved the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, which would bar members of Congress and congressional staff from using non-public, inside information for private gain. While the House version of the STOCK Act is weaker than the Senate’s, both versions retained an amendment sponsored by Sens. John McCain, R-AZ and Jay Rockefeller, D-WV, to prohibit Fannie and Freddie executives from receiving multi-million dollar bonuses while the GSEs remain in federal conservatorship.

The Justice Department and some members of Congress are unconvinced the mortgage industry is up to the task of fairly making and servicing mortgages in a tough housing market. That’s motivating them to use all of the tools at their disposal – and considering new ones – to combat discrimination and other abusive behavior. “In the coming year, we will continue our efforts to provide justice to those families who were harmed by discriminatory conduct during the mortgage boom and to hold lenders responsible for their actions,” U.S. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said in testimony before the Senate Judiciary...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency wants to use parts of the existing MBS programs at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to build a new mortgage securitization platform that could be used by a variety of issuers under a new plan to wind down the government-sponsored enterprises. The FHFA this week submitted to Congress a strategic plan to “update and extend the goals and directions” of the GSEs, which have been under government conservatorship since September 2008 with “no near-term resolution in sight.” Many of the initiatives are already underway. “This plan envisions actions by the enterprises that will...

A bill filed in the Senate earlier this month would authorize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. member banks, to enter into long-term leases to permit families to stay in their homes while also easing the pressure of unsold foreclosure inventory on the housing market. The Home Act, S. 2080, sponsored by Sen. Dean Heller, R-NV, would afford banks and the GSEs the option of leasing their real estate-owned (REO) properties for up to five years, with the additional prospect of selling the house to the renter once the rental lease runs out.