This official speculated that perhaps Calabria was referring to the companies’ corporate culture before the financial crisis, when the politically connected secondary market giants were widely feared on Capitol Hill.
If the Financial Stability Oversight Council gets its way, GSE capital standards will be tighter than what many in the industry want. Is that a problem? Opinions vary.
Eric Kaplan of the Milken Institute said the best possible explanation for the FHFA director’s remark is he thinks the GSEs may still have some of that profit-at-any-cost mentality that got them into trouble a decade ago.
The council said any distress that affects the secondary mortgage market activities of the GSEs “could pose a risk to financial stability if those risks are not properly mitigated.”
When questioned about the steep fee the GSEs charge to buy early forbear-ance loans, the FHFA director turned the tables on the lawmakers: Why didn’t Congress pay for it in the CARES Act?
Wells Fargo Securities predicts the delinquency rate for high quality Fannie collateral — mortgages with loan-to-value ratios between 60% and 97% — will reach 4.3% in October.
FHFA officers told the inspector general that they believed performing some of the required security assessments “was an inefficient use of agency resources.”