WASHINGTON - Records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and an interview with Alan Greenspan reveal the pivotal role the former Federal Reserve Board chairman played in the debate over reforming regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and how closely he coordinated with White House officials on the issue.
The records, provided to American Banker in response to an October 2004 FOIA request, reveal 450 meetings Mr. Greenspan hosted at the Fed with 319 people from September 2003 through August 2005.
Mr. Greenspan met with foreign dignitaries, bankers, Wall Street executives, and cabinet officials, but many visitors were key players in the fight over cracking down on the government-sponsored enterprises.
"GSEs are a very serious financial issue for this country," Mr. Greenspan said in an interview this week. "I would have been derelict had I not indicated my concerns."
Mr. Greenspan held frequent meetings with White House officials who agreed with him that Congress should create a strong new regulator with authority over Fannie and Freddie.
For example, on April 4, 2005, Mr. Greenspan hosted a meeting with Allan Hubbard, director of the National Economic Council, and Kevin Warsh, then special assistant to the President on economic policy.
Two days later, Mr. Greenspan testified before the Senate Banking Committee, urging lawmakers to cap the mortgage portfolios of Fannie and Freddie. The next day Treasury Secretary John Snow largely embraced Mr. Greenspan's position, saying a new regulator should be required to limit the portfolios.
Mr. Greenspan met several other times with White House officials on the GSEs and other issues.
Those meetings included nine with Stephen Friedman, Mr. Hubbard's predecessor at the White House, and eight more with Mr. Hubbard.
Mr. Greenspan met three times with Mr. Warsh, who was instrumental in setting the administration's GSE policy. The Senate confirmed Mr. Warsh last Friday for a seat on the Fed's seven-member board of governors. He is rumored to be a candidate to succeed Roger Ferguson as vice chairman; Mr. Ferguson announced his resignation Wednesday.
"This data indicates just how closely the Fed and the White House may have been working together ... on an issue that is critical to both institutions," said Tom Schlesinger, the executive director of the Financial Markets Center, an independent, nonprofit research center that monitors the Fed from Howardsville, Va.
A White House spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment.
Mr. Greenspan also met multiple times with the chief executives of Fannie and Freddie.
Richard Syron, Freddie's CEO, met with Mr. Greenspan seven times between January 2004, a month after Mr. Syron took the job, and March 2005 - more than any other nongovernment official.
Asked about the meetings, Mr. Greenspan said Mr. Syron, who formerly was the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, is a "good friend."
Still, several of Mr. Syron's meetings came before Mr. Greenspan testified on Capitol Hill about GSE issues, including a meeting in January, February, and March of last year.
In contrast, former Fannie CEO Franklin Raines met with Mr. Greenspan only twice, and Daniel Mudd, who took the reins last year after Mr. Raines was ousted, met with the central banker once in February 2005.
Mr. Greenspan, who retired Jan. 31 after 18 years atop the Fed, said that he met with the companies' executives at their request, and that they attempted to convince him their portfolios did not pose a threat to the U.S. economy.
"I did not get credible rebuttals to the analysis which I presented in testimony before the Congress," Mr. Greenspan said.
Former Fed Governor Edward Gramlich, now the provost at the University of Michigan, said the complex GSE issue often came up at the weekly or biweekly economic briefings that the Fed governors hold with staff on Monday mornings.
"The Fed's interests in this are pure as the driven snow," Mr. Gramlich said. "Greenspan was, and we were, worried about financial stability."
A spokesman for Fannie declined to comment for this story. A spokeswoman for Freddie said Mr. Syron and Mr. Greenspan "are former colleagues and have been professional acquaintances for decades." She deferred to the Fed on the content of the meetings.
There were other GSE-related meetings. Mr. Greenspan met with Armando Falcon Jr. on May 9, 2005, just days before he stepped down as director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. In an interview, Mr. Falcon, now a principal at Canonbury Group, said that he requested the meeting to discuss broader housing issues, but that they also discussed congressional efforts to reform the GSEs.
The records are incomplete because the Fed would name only visitors who checked in to meet with Mr. Greenspan. The records do not include visitors who might have first met with another Fed official and then visited the chairman. The records also do not list meetings Mr. Greenspan had elsewhere, such as on Capitol Hill or at the White House.
Still, the records offer a rare window into the breadth of issues that Mr. Greenspan faced on a daily basis in his role as central bank chief.
For example, he met with lawmakers or Hill staff members on 31 occasions, including four meetings with Sen. Charles Hagel, R-Neb. Mr. Greenspan also met twice, in September 2003 and September 2004, with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, now the secretary of state.
Mr. Greenspan met three times with former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin after he had become the chairman of the executive committee at Citigroup Inc. He met four times with James Thain, the chief executive officer of the New York Stock Exchange. He also met once with Stan O'Neal, the chief executive of Merrill Lynch & Co.
More than 100 of the 450 meetings were with international officials or diplomats, including Gordon Brown, the U.K. chancellor of the exchequer (three meetings), and Kamil al-Gailani, the Iraqi minister of finance (one meeting).
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