Housing finance reform

FHFA Director Mel Watt said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be reincorporated as private entities and the government must provide an explicit guarantee for catastrophic losses in the secondary mortgage market.

House Republicans are exiting Congress in droves ahead of the 2018 midterm elections and the stakes for the financial services industry could be significant.

Of the more than 30 GOP lawmakers due to retire at yearend — a historically significant level of departures for a single election — several are important to banking policy.

House Republicans are exiting Congress in droves ahead of the 2018 midterm elections and the stakes for the financial services industry could be significant.

Cryptocurrencies continue to dominate much of the news, with a warning on bitcoin taking the top spot and a story about Ripple's partnership with MoneyGram doing well. Housing finance reform, Wells Fargo and the CFPB also featured.

The Senate Banking Committee is expected soon to release a bipartisan bill that would significantly reshape the housing finance market, but key issues remain unresolved.

A regulatory relief package is likely to come out of the Senate in the new year, and lawmakers could follow it up with a housing finance reform push. But the midterm elections could cause some reform initiatives to grind to a halt.

The announcement Thursday that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt agreed to let Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac each build a $3 billion capital buffer avoided a potential crisis.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be allowed to build capital buffers to protect against losses under an agreement between the Treasury Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency announced on Thursday.

The government-sponsored enterprises are at the heart of our housing finance problems, not the solutions.