Tag Archives: Senate Banking Committee

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac required a combined taxpayer bailout of $188 billion in 2008 after the government seized control of them. The two GSEs returned to profitability in 2012. The future of the two GSEs has been a hotly contested topic in Washington as well as in the rest of the housing industry. Both parties appear to want to wind down the FHFA's conservatorship of the two, but cannot agree on what, if anything, should replace them as well as what role the government should play in housing, if any.

Representative Richard Shelby (R-Alabama), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, expressed the need for more oversight and accountability from the Federal Reserve during a full committee hearing earlier this week.

During a hearing spread out over two days at the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on February 10 and 12, Committee chair Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) pointed out a “bipartisan understanding” that financial institutions need relief from perceived overregulation.

In a widely anticipated move, U.S. Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) was named Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs for the 114th Congress, according to an announcement from Shelby's website Thursday.

In his first time to testify before Congress since he became director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) in January, Mel Watt on Wednesday outlined three main objectives that make up the 2014 Conservatorship for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and discussed the agency's progress toward each in the last 10 months.

Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) director Mel Watt will testify before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs in an open session on Wednesday, November 19.

U.S. Senator Richard Shelby, R-Alabama, is expected to become the new chair of the Senate's Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee following Tuesday's election in which Republicans retained control of the House and won enough seats to gain a majority in the Senate as well.

Federal Reserve governor Daniel Tarullo echoed Gruenberg's statement, though he was less concrete on a timeline: "I don't know whether I'd say by the end of the year, but I think we're definitely in the home stretch." As it was proposed in 2011, the rule originally called for securities issuers to hold on to 5 percent of a mortgage's risk after selling it unless the borrower made a 20 percent down payment.

Appearing before the Senate Banking Committee for his nomination hearing, Julian Castro, whose work in San Antonio includes an initiative to spark private investment for the production of thousands of additional housing units in the city in 2014 alone, opened his testimony with reassurances that his leadership would have HUD focusing on "outcomes, not only inputs."

CFPB Director Richard Cordray appeared before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Tuesday morning to give the Semi-Annual Report of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. At the hearing, a myriad of topics were discussed, including mortgages, student loans, as well as proposed data collection efforts for the National Mortgage Database.