House Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, called for greater accountability of the GSEs and discussed reintroducing his Dodd-Frank Act reform bill in the next Congress, during remarks in Washington last week. He said the GOP’s PATH (Protecting American Taxpayers and Homeowners) Act would help end the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout. The PATH Act, first introduced in 2013, proposes to phase out the GSEs within five years. In addition to ending the “costly” bailout, Hensarling said the bill would protect and restore the FHA to its defined mission, increase mortgage competition, enhance transparency, maximize consumer choice, and break down barriers to private investment capital.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau late last week filed its much-anticipated petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to reconsider some of the key holdings made by a three-judge panel of the court against the agency in PHH Corp. v. CFPB back in mid-October. One such holding was the panel’s determination that the CFPB’s leadership structure is unconstitutional because it is run by a sole director who can only be removed by the president for cause. While an appeal by the bureau was widely expected, the issue took on a new urgency after Republican real estate developer Donald Trump won the presidential election. In its petition, the CFPB asserted...

The election of Donald Trump as the 45th president may open a path out of conservatorship for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, some investors in the two government-sponsored enterprises believe. According to interviews conducted with GSE investors, industry lobbyists, trade group officials and others, a “recap and release” plan backed by the junior preferred shareholders of Fannie and Freddie could formally be presented to the Trump administration early next year. There hasn’t...

Investors are trying to make sense of the new political/economic landscape following the election of Donald Trump to be the next president, and how best to navigate his uncertain, and at times contradictory, signals during his campaign. Much of the conversation over the last week has focused on the likely effect the new regime will have on the Federal Reserve and its chair, Janet Yellen. Trump, who has been a fierce critic of the U.S. central bank, has indicated he won’t outright replace Yellen, but neither will he nominate her for a second term. And of course, what happens with the Fed will spill over, one way or the other, into the financial markets. “The Fed will normalize...

Three financial-industry trade associations submitted a joint amici brief to the Supreme Court of the U.S. seeking an end to the confusion over whether extender statutes that refer only to the “statute of limitations” should apply to the “statute of repose” as well. The circuit courts are split on the issue, with four courts deviating from a 2014 SCOTUS ruling in CTS v. Waldburger, in which property owners tried to hold CTS Corp., operator of an electronic plant in North Carolina, liable for damages from toxic contaminants on the land. The property owners filed...

Inside-the-Beltway analysts are predicting that financial regulation and new agency leadership posts will be a primary battleground in the incoming Trump administration. The Bipartisan Policy Center said nominating and confirming people to fill seats on financial regulatory agencies, and at the Treasury, will likely be the most important moves made by the new president and Congress. President-elect Trump wants...

Returning appraisal regulations back to the individual states would be counterproductive, according to James Park, executive director of the Appraisal Subcommittee of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council. Park and other experts spoke about the need for standardization and modernization at a hearing in the House Financial Services Committee this week. “Replacing the federal system with a state-based system would confuse, not streamline,” he said, noting that the “cornucopia” of statutes and guidelines are confusing and burdensome for everyone. Bill Garber, director of government and external relations at the Appraisal Institute, agreed...

Last week’s surprise presidential victory by Republican billionaire real estate developer Donald Trump means some big changes for rulemaking and enforcement activities at the CFPB, to the benefit of the financial services industry, according to the consensus of a variety of analysts and experts. The most likely changes have to do with replacing the bureau’s single director leadership structure a bipartisan commission, and subjecting the agency to the congressional appropriations process. But the tenure of the current director, Richard Cordray, also could come into play, some feel. FBR & Co. analyst Edward Mills and his team predict the agency will have a new director “following the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling [involving PHH Corp.] that allows the president to ...

With Republicans poised to have control of the White House and Congress early next year there were initially concerns that the incoming Trump administration might ponder the unthinkable: killing the government guarantee on mortgage-backed securities and eventually dismantling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. After all, many elected GOP officials blame the two GSEs for the housing crisis (a notion not universally shared, by any means) and would like to eliminate them. The fear was that the vehicle for GSE euthanasia might very well turn out to be a rewrite of Rep. Jeb Hensarling’s (R-TX) “The Protecting American Taxpayers and Homeowners Act” or PATH legislation. Hensarling is also chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

Market analysts, observers and participants alike feel pretty much in the dark about what to expect from Republican President-elect Donald Trump when it comes to the fate of government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. “Mortgage finance legislation and the future of the GSEs was never discussed during the campaign so there are no clear indicators of what a Trump administration will do regarding the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods said in a post-election review. Complicating life for the new regime is...