Compliance & Regulation

President Obama's recent State of the Union speech, as widely predicted, turned out to be a campaign speech rather than objective, substantive oratory. GOP candidate Mitt Romney characterized the Obama speech as a 'Groundhog Day' event ... more of the same optimistic promises of things to come.

Among new Obama Administration moves to aid housing is a pilot program aimed at helping certain rural borrowers refinance to reduce their payments.

With Bank of America shedding mortgage servicing rights en masse, and a handful of other megabanks writing down their MSRs because of Basel III, prepayments and other concerns, one might think that the asset must stink to high heaven. Well, think again.

As might be expected, the American Bankers Association is none-too-thrilled with a new White House plan to tax banks to pay for a new government refinancing program.

Military generals are cautioned to avoid fighting the last war; time and opponents have a way of producing new ways to contest a battlefield, catching unwary leaders off guard. When it comes to housing policy and political power, are Washington observers missing the next conflict?

President Obama is urging Congress to pass a bank tax, funneling the money over to the Federal Housing Administration which will then refinance non-GSE borrowers who are under water on their loans.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is preparing to back away from a controversial plan to overhaul the 25 basis point minimum servicing fee paid on Fannie Mae and Freddie loans, after intense, across-the-board industry opposition to the idea.

Is the Obama Administration starting to listen to the mortgage industry - and in a good way? Well, don't throw a party quite yet, but two major mortgage developments this week suggest that perhaps the White House is starting to understand that you can't have a housing recovery without the cooperation of lenders and servicers that make the loans.

NCUA said Tuesday it disagrees with a tentative ruling by a federal judge that would dismiss its suit against RBS Securities in the failure of WesCorp FCU, a ruling that could jeopardize similar suits against JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo for the sale of risky mortgage backed securities to five failed corporate credit unions.

President Obama's State of the Union and a recent regulatory speech as prepared for a securitization group's conference drive home the fact that generally the government's view of whether it wants to encourage the industry to lend more or not remains conflicted.