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Janet Yellen was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the country's 78th Treasury secretary and the first woman to hold the job, putting her in charge of overseeing an economy that continues to be hobbled by the coronavirus pandemic.

James M. Brower Jr., CPA, is a partner and State and Local Tax Leader at Marks Paneth LLP.

Investor concerns about a 25 basis point reduction taking business from private insurers might be overblown, but a 50 bp cut could affect an additional 10%-15% of the low down payment market, KBW said.

Chana R. Schoenberger is the editor-in-chief of American Banker. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of Financial Planning after joining Arizent in 2020. 

She has conducted print and on-stage interviews with top executives, regulators, and experts, including:

• Santander Executive Chairman Ana Botin
• U.S. Bank CEO Gunjan Kedia
• BMO US CEO Darrel Hackett
• Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman
• Truist's Scott Stearsman
• New York State Superintendant of Financial Services Adrienne Harris

In her prior role, she was the managing editor for U.S. wealth management at J.P. Morgan. Before that, she was a columnist and freelance journalist, and previously worked at Bloomberg News, Dow Jones/The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes. A graduate of Harvard College, she received her master's degree as part of Columbia Journalism School's Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economic and Business Journalism. Currently, she serves on the board of the journalists' professional association SABEW, the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. She is now based in the Boston area after living in New York City, Tokyo and Canada.

Follow her on X at @cschoenberger.

The subsidiary of New Residential Investment produced nearly $400 million in non-QM volume in the first quarter of 2020 before putting a hold on the product offering in March.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council could determine that a broad range of mortgage companies should be subject to “heightened prudential standards,” said Andrew Olmem, a partner at Mayer Brown and a former senior economic adviser to the White House.

At least 25 properties that Columbia Sussex Corp. has financed with loans packaged into commercial-mortgage backed securities are in special servicing or on servicer watch lists.

The former No. 2 at Countrywide had been battling brain cancer prior to passing away from the coronavirus.

If new housing policy initiatives are not adopted by Congress, the Biden Administration may seek to push the GSEs into receivership, which would damage the conventional market, columnist and analyst Chris Whalen says.

Stephen Scott is a risk intelligence expert and served as chief international investigator during congressional inquiries into fraud and corruption. He is founder and CEO of Starling, which provides AI-powered risk analytics.