The Bush administration is considering at least four candidates to head the regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, people familiar with the search said.
Jonathan Fiechter, a deputy director at the International Monetary Fund; Edward DeMarco, assistant deputy commissioner at the Social Security Administration; Mark Sullivan, the U.S. representative to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development; and Steve McMillan, an adviser to White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card are among the candidates, said the people, who declined to be identified.
In May the administration began seeking a new director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, to succeed Stephen Blumenthal.
Congress is debating legislation that would create a tougher regulator for Fannie Mae, which is based in Washington, and Freddie Mac, of McLean, Va. Anyone offered the OFHEO post "is going to have to ask themselves whether they want to take a job that may be overseeing the unwinding of" the agency, said Josh Rosner, an analyst at Medley Global Advisors in New York.
Mr. Fiechter joined the IMF in 2003 as deputy director of the monetary and financial system department, after three years as senior deputy comptroller at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Mr. DeMarco was the director of the Treasury's Office of Financial Institutions Policy before joining the Social Security Administration in 2003.
Mr. McMillan, a former aide to retired Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, became an adviser to Mr. Card last month, after serving in the office of White House Budget Director Josh Bolton. Mr. Sullivan became the U.S. representative to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in 2002, rejoining the Treasury, where he had served as general counsel from 1988 until 1989.
None of the four candidates replied to phone messages requesting comment.
On Oct. 26 the House passed legislation that would create a stricter regulator. Senate legislation the Banking Committee approved in July has not gone to the floor for a vote.
Democrats and some Republicans on the Banking Committee, along with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, oppose a provision that would require a new regulator to cut the companies' combined $1.4 trillion mortgage portfolios. The holdings generate about two thirds of the profit at the government-sponsored companies, which own or guarantee almost half the $7.6 trillion mortgage market.
Mr. Blumenthal, who in May succeeded Armando Falcon as the director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, voiced support for the House bill in a Nov. 16 speech in Hong Kong. He said the case for cutting the companies' portfolios was not "terribly persuasive."
But the administration criticized the legislation in October for not providing for a stronger regulator with a mandate to reduce the companies' mortgage holdings.
