When the revised Corker-Warner bill (Crapo-Johnson) is released, meaningful revisions will not be found. The revised bill will remove and/or modify specific features in the old Corker-Warner bill that were rejected previously by sitting Senators (and House Representatives) and rejected by the various stakeholders in housing finance and real estate industry.
This fiddling with the features was done to lessen the potential for rejection in the Senate and in the housing finance industry and sectors before and after the bill is released from committee. The Corker-Warner bill was so badly done it never left committee and did not reach the floor where it had no chance of passing.
The revisions are based on the hearings held by the Senate Banking Committee and the clandestine back-room dealings in the Senate among Senate factions and in the White House. This is the worst way to go about reforming housing finance. Politicking and lobbying to get a bill passed by making compromises and fiddling with pieces of legislation without considering how to really get it right overall in a specifically financial manner is a recipe for disaster.
It is a fact that the legislators of the Senate (and more so in the House) are not qualified to make a housing finance reform bill that affects more than 20% of the US economy. They are simply not trained in these matters and are ignorant of both the general and finer details of housing finance.
In fact, they are endangering the financial lives and fortunes of millions of citizens with their attempt reform what they are intellectually, knowledge-wise and experientially incapable of doing.
The media will not make the call on this folly. The legislators will bluff their way through this as if they understand and know precisely what they are doing. The American people will not know they are being taken for a ride.
We have seen the misrepresentations, misstatements, misdirection, bias, and selectivity of view and the willingness of legislators to enforce their will upon others.
Someone must open the windows and let some fresh air in on this fetid atmosphere in Washington, DC.
An independent commission should be formed with members who are vetted for their success and experience in housing finance and who will not fall prey to personal interests and gain. They should produce a complete and authoritative report that can be distributed publicly to the Congress, White House, business sectors and general public for review. With all being on the same page, knowing the facts as they are and not as they wish or twist them to be, and the mass confusion removed, perhaps a better beginning and end could be had in housing finance reform.
