President Bush is expected to appoint James B. Lockhart III as acting director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, which supervises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to sources.Mr. Lockhart is currently the second-ranking official at the Social Security Administration, and the White House wants him to take over OFHEO immediately and replace acting director Steven Blumenthal. The timing may be important because OFHEO is expected to release its long-awaited report on Fannie's $10.8 billion accounting scandal soon. Recent news reports indicate that OFHEO may release a report in a few weeks, but an OFHEO spokeswoman declined to specify a timeframe when asked by MortgageWire. Mr. Lockhart was a co-founder and managing director of NetRisk, a risk management software firm, before joining the SSA. During his career, he was a senior vice president at Nation Re (1996) and a managing director at Smith Barney (1993-95).
