Not everyone thinks the economy is as bad off as doomsayers have been saying lately. In fact, William Dudley, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, says the expansion we’ve experienced for the past seven years has put American homeowners in a much better position to withstand any pending trouble. Dudley spoke at a recent press briefing at the New York Fed to address the state of an economy that has been, despite what it might seem, steadily getting better since mid-2009.
Because the expansion has been going for so long, Dudley said, many are starting to wonder, quote, whether this expansion has already entered its twilight years. Close quote. But such fears are not based in real evidence, particularly in a strong housing market, he said. Dudley said that house price growth is running nationally at around 5 percent per year and that homeowners are being more cautious in how they are responding to the rise in home values than homeowners were in the wake of the mortgage-and-loans free-for-all that led to the collapse of 2008.
Florida-based Fairholme Funds, one of the largest investors in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has filed the public version of its request that the Court of Federal Claims order the federal government to turn over documents that the company says are being unlawfully withheld in its case against the government. Fairholme sued the government in 2013 over what had then been a yearlong sweep of GSE profits into the Treasury. The practice began in 2012 as the result of an amendment to the original 2008 bailout agreement.