FHA Government backing for the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) gives it competitive advantages over private sector mortgage insurers, driving them out of the marketplace and leaving homebuyers with fewer choices, witnesses told the Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance. Wednesday’s hearing was the third in a series the Financial Services Committee is holding this year to examine the nation’s housing finance system. Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) announced in January that the hearings will focus specifically on the financially troubled FHA and the need to crea... Read More »
Last week Chairman Hensarling and Oversight & Investigations Subcommittee Chairman McHenry sent a letter to Attorney General Holder and Treasury Secretary Lew seeking any and all documents related to the consideration of economic factors in the decision to prosecute large banks for financial crimes. The committee's investigation comes out of Mr. Holder's recent comments at a Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing in which the Attorney General suggested some large financial instutitions are now "too big to jail." Read the letter to Holder and Lew. Read More »
In January, a federal court held that the Senate was not in recess when President Obama made three appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). In deeming those appointments unconstitutional, the court invalidated decisions made by the NRLB during the illegal appointments. While the court ruled only on the NLRB appointments, Richard Cordray, the President's nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), was appointed at the same time and in the same manner as the unconstitutional NLRB appointees. Chairman Hensarling anticipates that a federal court will soon rea... Read More »
“We talked about cash on balance sheets not deployed…People just sitting on cash because interest rates are too low and returns are too low now, but they think that they will go up in the future. So, everyone just sits until the Fed takes action. Rather than trying to read the market, they are trying to read what the Fed is going to do - which is very distorting in my view.” – Monetary Policy Subcommittee Chairman John Campbell "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the essence of crony capitalism, and if we recreate them in some form or fashion, as so many in the industry and across the aisle are r... Read More »
Many of the interest groups that directly benefit from large subsidizations in the housing market continue to state that Fannie and Freddie fell victim to the bad private market participants. This suggestion is completely false. It was government housing policy, coupled with loose money from the Federal Reserve, that caused the housing bubble and those are the areas where we must focus reform. Read More »
"I believe… the economic challenges of our nation are fiscal in nature, not monetary. They cannot be solved by the Fed." – Chairman Jeb Hensarling "There seems to be…a lot of evidence out there that the benefits of the low interest rate and quantitative easing are accruing primarily to the federal government, foreign governments and large banks.” – Monetary Policy & Trade Subcommittee Chairman John Campbell The Financial Services Committee hosted Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for his semiannual Monetary Policy Report to Congress on Wednesday. Republicans repeatedly questioned the wisdo... Read More »
On February 14, 2013 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) added the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to its list of government programs identified as “high risk due to their greater vulnerability to fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement or the need for transformation”. Read More »
Just one day after the Financial Services Committee held its second hearing in as many weeks on the shaky finances of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), the Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced it has added the FHA to its list of “High Risk” government programs. Every two years, GAO identifies programs that are at “high risk due to their greater vulnerability to fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement or the need for transformation” to become more effective or efficient. Chairman Hensarling quickly put out a statement saying the designation “reinforces everything our committee... Read More »
The bipartisan JOBS Act, which originated in the Financial Services Committee and was passed by Congress earlier this year, is working to boost the economy. A report in the Charlotte Observer notes that provisions of the act are helping community banks to trim regulatory costs and save money – money that can be pumped back into local economies, start small businesses and create jobs. At a time when the over-regulation and red tape of the Dodd-Frank Act is driving up their expenses, community banks are getting some much needed relief thanks to the JOBS Act. Read the Charlotte Observer report be... Read More »
Some Washington politicians and supposed media “fact checkers” have been falling over themselves the last few days busily defending the Dodd-Frank Act. But rather than rely on what the politicians and Beltway pundits think, Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee actually did something quite remarkable by Washington standards: we asked small town community bankers, financial institutions and small business operators what THEY think about the Dodd-Frank Act. After all, they are the ones who have to live under Dodd-Frank’s more than 400 new regulations. Since Republicans assumed t... Read More »
