Obama's Phony Fannie Reform

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

Housing Policy: The White House is taking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the wrong direction. Instead of reforming the toxic mortgage twins, it's broadening their role.

Even as taxpayer losses from the failed mortgage giants mount, the administration has done nothing to address the problem except to send Congress a thin report that merely pays lip service to reforms.

"You all said you all would come forth at the beginning of this year with a real proposal" to reform the home-finance system, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., complained to administration officials during a bank panel hearing. "The year is almost over and you have not done that."

That was December. The administration is still dragging its feet. Worse, it's called on Congress and regulators to back off a bit and let Fannie and Freddie play a more active role in affordable housing, including:

• Helping underwater borrowers through the administration's Home Affordable Refinancing Program, or HARP.

• Converting foreclosed properties held by the agencies into rental units.

• Reducing loan principal for struggling homeowners in an effort to widen the reach of the administration's main foreclosure prevention program — the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP.

"I'll be honest, the programs that we put forward haven't worked at the scale we'd hoped," President Obama said last month. "The truth is, it will take more time than any of us would like for the housing market to recover from this crisis."

[Draggingtree]

Government Finds New Ways to Perpetuate the Bailouts of Fannie & Freddie

 

 

By: Ben Howe (Diary) | September 21st at 08:17 AM | 1

The cost of the bailouts seems never-ending and more of the mounting evidence that it didn’t work, like a bailout recipient laying off 16,000 workers this year, continue to make the news. Tied to the root cause of the financial meltdown of 2007-2008, are mortgage giants Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae in light of their penchant for bundling sub-prime mortgage securities in the years preceding ... http://www.redstate.com/2012/09/21/government-finds-new-ways-to-perpetuate-the-bailouts-of-fannie-freddie/