Member Corner

   FHFA  In 2008, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two giant government sponsored entities which helped fuel the housing bubble, received the largest bailout in U.S. history. Serving as Acting Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Edward DeMarco has been tasked with managing the GSEs’ mortgage portfolio and protecting taxpayers from future… Read more »

National Review: Representative Hensarling on the CFPB The logical import of Noel Canning v. NRLB, the D.C. Circuit’s decision striking down President Obama’s unilateral, non-recess NRLB appointments, is that the president’s similar CFPB director appointment is also unconstitutional. House Financial Services Committee chairman Jeb Hensarling agrees (h/t Todd… Read more »

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… 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… 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… 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… 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 &… 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,… Read more »