Economy

The Federal Housing Administration's insurance fund saw its fourth consecutive annual boost in its ratio of reserves to insured mortgages, reaching 2.32% in fiscal year 2016, the Department of Housing and Urban Development said Tuesday.

In a highly anticipated report, the Government Accountability Office found room for the Fed to improve its stress testing program, but its criticisms fell far short of industry hopes that the watchdog would provide cover for sweeping changes to the program.

Refusing to let innovators experiment in a permissive environment keeps regulators in the dark, and ultimately, prevents progress in financial services.

After anticipating four years of coordination with the White House, stunned Wall Street critics are reorganizing their priorities and vowing to oppose any attempts by the new Republican government to roll back post-crisis reforms.

The president-elect faces major questions about credit access, affordable housing, the future of Dodd-Frank, and the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the extent to which he will act upon them remains unclear.

Facebook has disabled so-called ethnic affinity filters from housing, credit and employment advertising following mounting criticism that the practice allowed marketers to discriminate against minorities in violation of fair housing and civil rights laws.

Donald Trump's campaign strongly endorsed the idea of restoring the Depression-era separation of banking and commerce, but since Trump's victory, the idea has all but vanished.

Industry forecasts for 2017 mortgage volume assumed a continuation of current housing and economic policies under a Hillary Clinton administration. But with Donald Trump's win, analysts are sorting out what, if any, adjustments are needed to those projections.

Officials of the National Association of Realtors were ecstatic about the Federal Housing Administration's lower owner-resident requirements for condo loans – until they read the fine print.

A community banker on the president-elect's economic advisory council says none of his tax reforms target the mortgage interest deduction.