Fannie Mae-No Politics (FNMA)

[crawford2012]

President Trump has officially sent Mark Calabria's nomination to the Senate to serve as the next director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Calabria, the current chief economist for Vice President Mike Pence and a former Republican aide on the Senate Banking Committee, is known across the industry as an advocate for substantially shrinking the footprint of the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.


THIS IS DEFINITLY NOT THE KIND OF MESSAGE I WOULD LIKE TO READ.

I am sure there is a lot of work going on behind the scene, but at the end of the day who is it being done to benefit???

As director of the housing finance agency, Mr. Calabria would have some authority to reduce the role that Fannie and Freddie play. He could, for example, require the companies to raise the fees they charge on loans, or limit the maximum size of the loans that the companies can purchase.

But David Berson, who worked as Fannie Mae’s chief economist from 1987 to 2007 and is now the chief economist at Nationwide, said he did not expect big changes no matter whom the administration named to lead the agency.

“Things are working too well, and it would be too politically divisive,” he said.

The Trump administration released a report in June proposing to privatize Fannie and Freddie while continuing to subsidize mortgage loans for less affluent home buyers through an existing program operated by the Federal Housing Administration. Such a plan, however, would require congressional approval, an unlikely prospect given that the House will soon be controlled by Democrats who have long been more supportive of government involvement in the housing finance market.