FHFA announces senior staff appointments

WASHINGTON — The Federal Housing Finance Agency has announced three senior staff appointments as Director Mark Calabria continues to make key hiring decisions.

Clinton Jones will join the FHFA as senior adviser for legal affairs and policy, while Lynn Fisher will serve as senior adviser for economics. Matt Grinney will join the agency as a senior communications and policy adviser.

Jones joins the agency from the House Financial Services Committee, where he served as senior counsel and staff leader for insurance and housing. His departure was announced at a hearing last week in the housing, community development and insurance subcommittee, where Chairman Lacy Clay, D-Mo., and the ranking member, Sean Duffy, R-Wis., thanked Jones for his leadership. Before working with the House Financial Services Committee, Jones held roles at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Fannie Mae.

Fisher is joining the FHFA from the American Enterprise Institute, where she was a resident scholar and co-director at the Center on Housing Markets and Finance. In a December op-ed for American Banker, Fisher expressed concern about the increasing mortgage risk for first-time homebuyers.

“When the next recession happens, increasing defaults will result in a pullback in mortgage credit and a slowdown in sales, leading to further prices declines,” she wrote. “The declines are likely to be the greatest among entry-level homes, and borrowers and taxpayers will be reminded why housing belongs on the list of financial weaknesses.”

Like Calabria, Grinney will join the FHFA from Vice President Mike Pence’s office, where he was the associate director of speechwriting. Previously he was an assistant speechwriter for the Department of Health and Human Services and a communications adviser to Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah.

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