Politics

Louisiana's Transportation Secretary and the former Assistant to the President for Infrastructure discuss the state of play in the U.S. P3 sector, the impact of the new infrastructure law, and what's in store for the next decade.

The core function of the Federal Home Loan Bank System — advances to member institutions — plummeted 20% last year to $350 billion, its lowest level in 15 years. That erosion of purpose is emboldening critics, who say the Home Loan banks need to change or face irrelevance.

Laws in at least a dozen states allow municipalities or investors to acquire valuable property to satisfy tax liens far below the asset’s value, a legal organization said.

Lawmakers during a committee meeting on senior housing doubled down on past arguments blaming investors and government spending for the nation’s tight market.

The Federal Housing Administration confirmed the exclusion of real estate taxes and hazard insurance premiums, and discussed timelines.

Consumers should be sharing in the benefits from this fiscal year’s expected earnings of $8.8 billion, said the CHLA's Scott Olson.

An analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data reveals that banks continue to trail nonbanks in volume and another reveals that despite some improvement, inequities in lending to minority groups persist.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will potentially be banning business practices, forcing the divestiture of business lines and working with state agencies to revoke licenses, Director Rohit Chopra said Monday. He called out five big banks by name for repeatedly crossing legal lines.

Lawmakers also asked officials to include more perspectives from Veterans Affairs and USDA representatives and increase focus on manufactured home valuations.

Banking and credit union regulators are expected to respond to a White House call to root out discrimination in the predominantly white appraisal business. They will likely step up enforcement and data collection, reclaiming authority long ceded to the industry's governing body.

The actions involved are based on findings by an interagency task force first convened last year by Marcia Fudge, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Banking executives and analysts worry that the Federal Reserve's aggressive plan to raise interest rates will be insufficient to tame inflation and overcome economic fallout from the war in Ukraine.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank will take the “necessary steps” to get inflation down even if that means increasing interest rates more rapidly than currently anticipated and eventually to levels that slow the broader economy.

An audit found that mostly wealthy, white homeowners in urban counties were benefiting from the century-old policy.

In an update to an exam manual, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says racial or other bias associated with a wide range of financial products — not just credit — is illegal and subject to CFPB enforcement actions.

All five of the Biden administration's nominees received enough votes to secure passage to the Senate floor. Chair Sherrod Brown of Ohio called the moment "historic."

The increase is the first since 2018 and, combined with reductions in the mortgage and Treasury bond portfolio, it could drive 30-year home loan rates to 4.5% by year-end.

An oversight official at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has laid out some specific responsibilities mortgage companies have when they work with borrowers receiving this type of housing relief.

If lenders get to choose the credit-scoring model, the Big Three credit bureaus will likely set a price for VantageScore that is super low, so low that FICO cannot compete, just as Uber decimated the taxicab industry by setting prices artificially low until the taxicabs were gone, writes an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center.

The West Virginia Democrat released a statement Monday saying that Sarah Bloom Raskin, President Biden's nominee to serve as the Federal Reserve's top regulator, "failed to satisfactorily address my concerns" and that he would not support her. Manchin's "no" vote puts her confirmation very much in doubt.