Progressive groups have turned their guns on Federal Housing Finance Agency acting director Ed DeMarco, arguing that he is holding back the housing recovery by refusing to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to engage in principal reductions on the loans they own or guarantee. MoveOn.org sent out an email message to supporters today with [...]

I think I’ve made my position on the foreclosure fraud settlement pretty clear. Nevertheless, there’s a time to stew and a time to figure out how to make this work as well as possible. I think there are some tangible steps that can be taken, if not to improve the deal, then to improve housing [...]

JPMorgan Chase estimates that 500,000 new loan modifications will result from the Administration’s changes to the embattled HAMP program. I’m skeptical of this projection, but let’s hear it out: JPMorgan Chase [[JPM]] analysts said in a report Monday they expect 1.7 million additional borrowers could qualify for the program under the more lenient DTI requirements [...]

I didn’t think much of the HAMP changes announced last Friday, but my pessimism mainly came from the fact that HAMP itself is an irreparably damaged program that nobody wants to use. There’s also the point that the GSEs are generally uninterested in a principal reduction program, and that has not changed. Ed DeMarco’s statement [...]

One reason why I don’t think we should particularly accept a six-month timeline on significant action from the RMBS working group is that there’s so much already in the public record. I recognize that criminal or civil enforcement actions take voluminous legal work and due diligence, but quite a bit of it has already been [...]

Brian Beutler writes that President Obama will likely have to make more recess appointments if he wants to staff key positions, including the newly-created vacancy at the Office of Management and Budget, as Jack Lew has become White House Chief of Staff. The assumption here is that Republicans will react to recess appointments at the [...]

The walls have closed in over the past couple weeks on mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The SEC charged former CEOs and executives at the companies with fraud. California Attorney General Kamala Harris sued them for imformation in a wide-ranging fraud investigation. And now we learn that the FBI is investigating them: At [...]

Kamala Harris, the Attorney General of California, sued government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over information on foreclosures in California. Rather than the endpoint of the investigation, this is the beginning of it; Harris wants information out of Fannie and Freddie that they have so far been unwilling to provide. Attorney General Kamala Harris, [...]

The Senate approved a short-term extension of the payroll tax cut, unemployment benefits and a fix to physician’s Medicare reimbursement payments for two months. The final vote was 89-10. These are clean extensions that punt the larger extension into next year, when this entire debate will repeat itself at the end of February. There are [...]

Perhaps trying to make up for the smackdown they took at the hands of Judge Jed Rakoff, who accused them of letting big banks get off scot-free, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil charges against six former executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, including the CEO, accusing them of securities fraud. Federal regulators [...]

OK, so we have the full language now of the compromise measure for the payroll tax cut, and there are basically three components to the pay-for for the legislation, which now only increases and extends the employee side of the tax cut (a total of a 3.1% tax cut, which functions as a 3.1% wage [...]