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Wall Street Journal: Regulators have created a mortgage minefield Incompatible and contradictory federal regulations -- including those in Dodd-Frank -- have created a mortgage minefield. The ultimate casualties will be the nascent housing recovery and the American home buyer. AEI: Overzealous intervention dooms the market Those who want government guarantees for mortgages see them as a path to encourage homeownership and market stability, but instead guarantees pose needless risks to homeowners and taxpayers. Government guarantees suffer from three flaws: the inability and unwillingness to pr... Read More »

Just one full day of committee activity for this week before the July 4th District Work Period. But be sure to check back here on the Bottom Line Blog -- and subscribe to our email lists -- for updates throughout the week. Here's what's happening: On Wednesday at 10 a.m. the full committee examines how Dodd-Frank could result in more taxpayer-funded bailouts. Later, at 2 p.m., the Housing & Insurance Subcommittee evaluates how HUD's Moving-to-Work Program benefits public and assisted housing residents. Read More »

Oversight & Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Patrick McHenry delivers this week's Sunday Video Message. He discusses what we learned about the CFPB in this week's Financial Institutions and Oversight hearings. Read More »

On Tuesday, Members of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee examined the budget for the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau (CFPB) with the bureau's Chief Financial Officer. While the CFPB generally lacks oversight and accountability, one particular issue of concern raised at the hearing was the outrageously expensive planned renovation of the bureau's Washington headquarters. Initially thought to cost $55 million -- a sum greater than the annual construction and acquisition budget for all federal buildings -- the actual budget for the 1,200-employee bureau's headquarters renovation... Read More »

Congressman Bill Huizenga joined us to talk about H.R. 1135, the Burdensome Data Collection Relief Act. The bill repeals Section 953(b) of the Dodd-Frank Act that requires all publicly traded companies to calculate and disclose the median annual total compensation of all employees and compare that number to the annual total compensation of the CEO in each SEC filing. While that sounds simple enough on paper, the real-world implications of Section 953 are substantial. As the congressman explains, the provision imposes significant administrative burdens on publicly traded companies while yieldi... Read More »

Congressman Robert Hurt introduced two of the bills we considered in today's markup: H.R. 1564, the Audit Integrity and Job Protection Act and H.R. 1105, the Small Business Capital Access and Job Preservation Act. Both were reported favorably by the committee with bipartisan support. The first bill, H.R. 1564, prohibits the Public Company Accounting and Oversight Board from forcing public companies to automatically change or rotate their independent auditing firms. Selecting a company’s auditor is a decision that should be made by a company’s board of directors and ratified by its shareholder... Read More »

Two subcommittee hearings and a full committee markup make for a slightly lighter week than last. Be sure to check back here on the Bottom Line Blog -- and subscribe to our email lists -- for updates throughout the week. Here’s what’s happening: On Tuesday -- as Rep. Capito previewed in our Sunday Video Message -- the Financial Institutions & Consumer Credit Subcommittee will examine how Dodd-Frank hampers home ownership. That hearing will take place at 10 a.m. Later, at 2 p.m., the Oversight & Investigations Subcommittee will review the budget for the CFPB. Finishing up committee activity fo... Read More »

Financial Institutions & Consumer Credit Subcommittee Chairman Shelley Moore Capito delivers this week's Sunday Video Message, the first in our new series. In the video, Rep. Capito previews next week's hearing on the Dodd-Frank Act's negative impact on homeownership. Read More »

Fortune: The Fed's other trillion dollar problem The amount of money banks have at the Fed recently reached 13 digits, for the first time ever. Bloomberg: New Home Prices Say What’s Different This Time Although no two business cycles are alike, most share some common characteristics. The interest-rate-sensitive sectors of the economy -- housing and manufacturing -- tend to lead on the way up and the way down, for obvious reasons. Inflation ebbs during the recession and in the early stages of the recovery. Credit creation drives the upswing. CNBC: Are Markets Facing a Crisis of Confidence? The ... Read More »

A survey of housing finance in other countries sheds light on the distortion that government subsidies for housing can cause in national economies. Professors at New York University’s Stern School of Business have pointed out that one thing that Spain and the United States have in common is a “massive misallocation of their economy’s resources to construction. The oversupply is contributing to the substantial unemployment rate in Spain and the U.S.” They further point out that the government’s programs to subsidize housing—which includes support through the GSEs—come with a significant price: ... Read More »