Compliance & Regulation

The $150 billion or so that U.S. taxpayers have spent to prop up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is "gone and won't be coming back," according to former Federal Home Loan Bank Board member Larry White.

Rep. Randy Neugebauer, the new chairman of the House Financial Services Oversight Subcommittee, believes the guarantee fees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac charge its seller/servicers are underpriced and should be increased.

Since the government seized control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the fall of 2008, the two have spent more than $160 million defending the firms and their former top executives in civil lawsuits.

A class action filed in New York over $3.4 billion in two mortgage-backed securities offerings ruled in favor of the banks that issued the MBS reaffirms that the law does not bend to political correctness.“Together we stand” may be valid in life but not in a court of law. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied class certification in a mortgage-backed securities lawsuit that alleged misstatements about residential mortgage loan origination practices in the offering documents for securities backed by those mortgage loans.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury ("Treasury") gives notice of the establishment of a Privacy Act System of Records primarily for the benefit of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which will become active July 21. Comments are being sought until Feb. 9. This new system of keeping records will also become effective Feb. 9.

If there hasn't been enough upheaval in the way mortgage originators and appraisers interact in the past few years, the next 12 months will see possibly the greatest changes to that relationship since the passage of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act in 1989.

Mortgage servicers that provide troubled borrowers with a 'single point of contact' to help them through loan modifications and workouts avoid costly delays and customer confusion, according to a Fannie Mae executive.

Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner can continue to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau if the Senate does not confirm the president's pick to head the agency, according to an opinion issued by two Inspector Generals.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is in the process of approving another one-year suspension of its anti-flipping rule on foreclosed properties bought with FHA loans.

Last year's robo-signing scandals delayed tens of thousands of foreclosures in the 23 states where the process is handled in court. A new controversy could complicate foreclosures in the other 27 states.