FHFA

Freddie Mac said it earned enough in the second quarter to send a $2 billion dividend to the U.S. Treasury, but the press release announcing the company’s financial results includes new language suggesting uncertainty as to whether the payment will be made as scheduled.

Regardless of whether Congress could act, proponents don’t seem to fully appreciate the potential unintended consequences of a future without Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Shareholders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac say a trove of documents they have obtained bolsters their case that the government lied when it decided to take all of the mortgage companies’ profits.

The government-sponsored enterprises transferred $5.5 billion of credit risk on $174 billion of mortgages in their portfolios during the first quarter.

Rather than working with large-scale investors, Freddie Mac said it will focus on assisting community organizations and local institutions to fund single-family properties for renters with special needs.

A regulatory plan to create new restrictions on banks’ executive compensation practices appears dead — but changes since the financial crisis may have made the proposal largely obsolete anyway.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has added three categories to the list of protected classes under equal opportunity employment and inclusion rules for regulated entities.

Royal Bank of Scotland Group agreed to pay $5.5 billion to settle the second of three major U.S. mortgage-backed securities probes the government-owned lender must overcome before it can fully return to the private sector.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency made just incremental changes to two of the seven affordable housing benchmarks.

The Senate is set to begin teeing up housing finance reform discussions at a Banking Committee hearing on Thursday, but many are skeptical that Congress will be able to succeed where it has failed in the past.