Compliance & Regulation

Congress has imposed numerous checks and balances on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's powers, according to Richard Cordray, who has been nominated by President Obama to be the agency's first director.

As settlement talks continue between the states and the megabanks over the robosigning scandal, some of the nation's largest servicers fear they may have a new item to add to their worry list: civil liability tied to the monthly processing of Federal Housing Administration loans.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is pushing back against claims that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were sophisticated investors that should have done a better job of vetting their purchases of mortgage-backed securities.

Many of the country's largest banks received $6 billion in kickbacks from mortgage insurers over the course of a decade, according to a previously undisclosed investigation by the Inspector General of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

MBS issuers have long enjoyed an exemption from onerous provisions of the Investment Company Act since the start of mortgage securitization in the early 1980s, but all that could change under a new proposal being weighed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In a long-awaited showdown over the future of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Tuesday, Republicans and Democrats sparred over whether the Senate should proceed with the nomination of the bureau's first director.

A coalition of industry groups is urging Congress to act quickly to maintain the GSE loan limit at $729,750, saying the pending expiration is hurting both home sales and application volume.

When the Federal Housing Finance Agency late Friday unveiled its $200 billion lawsuit against investment banking firms that sold faulty MBS to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it also targeted executives who signed the original shelf registration documents on the securities in question.

The nominee to be the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said he prefers to use "supervisory tools" as opposed to litigation to enforce consumer protection laws.

Stephen L. Ledbetter, senior vice president of mortgage backed securities for the Government National Mortgage Association, is leaving the agency for a senior position at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., according to officials familiar with the matter.