Bank Lawyer's Blog

Banks: Targets of Opportunity

Conservative economist Larry Kudlow claims that while bank-bashing didn't work for the Labor party in the recent UK elections, banks in the US should gear up for a round of groin-kicking from both sides of the US political spectrum as the US presidential election race heats up late this year and next. According to Kudlow, the intellectual dishonesty inherent in this tactic is apparent.

Few will admit it, but unaffordable, undocumented mortgage quotas came out of Washington, not Wall Street. And Fanny and Freddie enforced them. And while the Fed’s ultra-easy money destroyed the dollar, it also caused a bubble in home prices.

 

Yes, banks made risk-management mistakes. But when will the firing squads stop? You know, you can’t have a decent economy without banks.

 

But when will you ever hear a politician say that?

Let me guess.

 

[Sound of crickets chirping]

 

Kudlow lists the usual suspects: Lizzie Warren, Bernie ("The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains") Sanders, and, lately, Hilarity Clinton, but also notes that Republicans are also jumping on the anti-bank bandwagon.

Of all people, former Florida governor Jeb Bush bashed banks while in New Hampshire.

But wait, didn’t Jeb’s brother preside over the big bank bailout? Oops.

 

Former Texas governor Rick Perry is slamming the banks. So is former HP CEO Carly Fiorina. She actually said, “I agree fully with Elizabeth Warren.”

As Kudlow responds: "Huh?"

 

What's next for Carly? Is she coming out as 1/32 Huron? Will she change her last name to "Simon" and make her campaign song "Nobody Does It Better?"

 

Kudlow thinks that there are valid reasons for a politician to defend banks.

Banks do make business loans, which have picked up quite a bit. They do provide mortgages, though the terms are more difficult. They do offer credit cards, decent ATM machines, car loans, farm loans, and student loans. Even though the Fed has decimated interest rates, they do allow large savings accounts. And they do, after all, connect savings with investment. (I think that was their original purpose.)

Kudlow would get rid of the Ex-Im bank, as well as the "conserved" Aunt Fannie and Uncle Freddie. He doesn't say how he'd finance the US residential mortgage market without Fannie and Freddie, and I'd like to hear his ideas on that issue, because right now, those two broke (yet cash-generating) behemoths are pretty much all there is in the secondary mortgage market in this country, at least for conventional loans.

 

But I digress.

 

While sarcastically claiming that he'd never defend banks, he ends with a warning to pols.

Sometimes British politics leads our politics. And if bank-bashing didn’t work in the U.K., maybe politicians here should let it go, and instead focus on pro-growth measures like flat-tax reform, free trade, deregulation, and sound money. Just for a moment, why not leave banks alone?

Because they're easy scapegoats, Larry. Like lawyers, everybody loves to hate them, and for the cynics we have in D.C., who value power over truth (even those--or, perhaps, especially those--who claim to speak truth to power), they are low-hanging fruit.

Julian Is Julienned

Juilan Castro, the head of HUD, has taken his lumps lately over his amateur-hour performance on The Daily Show. Apparently, he just can't catch a break. Last week, he had the misfortune to appear before the House Financial Services Committee where he suffered the ultimate humiliation. No, not being grilled by Republican hit man Jeb (Clampett) Hensarling. That's a badge of honor with Castro's crowd. Rather, it was having to listen to Maxine Waters publicly praise him that had to cause him to spit up a little bit in his mouth. I know that she had that effect on me.

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Ranking Member of the Financial Services Committee, was one of the few to praise Castro.

"Secretary Castro, although today you will likely take a fair amount of criticism from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle for your decision, I’d like to take a moment to remind them that when the private sector virtually left our struggling housing market during the worst of the crisis, the FHA stepped up and provided the liquidity that kept it afloat. Despite the steps toward recovery the economy has taken since then, the housing sector continues to suffer from a tight lending environment – and a strong FHA is still very necessary," said Waters.

"I would also note that FHA is far from bankrupt, holding approximately $40 billion in reserves, continuing to generate revenue, and taking critical steps to recover its capital reserves, which are projected to show a positive balance in 2015," she added.

You heard that right: when the private sector collapsed, the FHA hung in there. Of course, the FHA had no choice. It couldn't file "bankruptcy" like a private entity, even though it was insolvent, because its insurance is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, it is required to fulfill its statutory purpose of providing mortgage insurance to back mortgages to qualified borrowers (many of whom turned out to be unqualified, but that's another story), and it has been used by clowns like (the Bridge Over Troubled) Waters to apportion housing credit to a constituency that appreciates the fact that the FHA being the lender that loans where angels fear to tread and votes accordingly. I think that putting Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae into conservatorship and pumping government money into those giant slush funds for progressive housing policy ("A Chicken In Every Pot and An Illegal Honduran Gardner In Every Malibu McMansion") did more to prop up the housing market than FHA insurance. Then again, who am I to argue with a brainiac like Maxine.

Hensarling and his henchman on the Republican side of the far divide are a bit perturbed with recent actions by the Master of the Selfie Stick in the White House, who reduced the annual mortgage insurance premiums for FHA by 50 basis points, from 1.35% to 0.85%, at a time when the FHA has still not restored its capital reserve ratio to the legally mandated level of 2%. In fact, it's 0.41%. The $40 billion that Maxine crowed about is supposed to over $200 billion.

Castro's response was as dynamic and on point as were his masterful responses to John Stewart. [Editor's Note: The previous sentence was sarcastic, for those readers who seem to take everything I write here in dead earnest.] Castro said that everything's great, we've never been better, nothing to see here, let's all fly to Colorado and score some "Hashey Bars."

Hensarling was not amused.

"With all do respect (Castro), we have heard that before, and you are sincere. But this committee has been told that once, twice, three times, and it hasn’t proven true,” said Hensarling. “Once again, you are in violation of the law and that has got to stop."

Except, Jeb, it won't stop. You know it, and so does everyone else with an IQ above that of a chunk of week-old Limburger cheese. The Republican-controlled house could pass legislation to punish the FHA, perhaps even threatening its funding. Even if the majority in the House did pass such an unpopular measure, Democrats in the Senate would likely thwart its progress in that chamber with procedural maneuvers, and the Perpetual Campaigner would veto it even if both houses pass it. By the time that useless exercise has run its course, there will be a new occupant in the house-is-not-a-home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Castro will be back to doing what he does best: looking dynamite in Armani formal wear.

Yes, we know: this is all about press releases for 2016. Keep up the good work.

I Left My Equity In San Francisco

When a government takeover plan is so whacked that even a city official in San Francisco thinks that it's whacked, you know that it's officially jumped the shark.

San Francisco’s controller discouraged city lawmakers from going forward with a proposal to use eminent-domain to help homeowners avoid foreclosure, citing federal limitations and risks to the city’s borrowing costs.

“The city’s participation in an eminent-domain program will likely have broader negative impacts on the city’s participation in financial markets, at least for an initial period,” controller Ben Rosenfield wrote in a report released Thursday.

Rosenfeld had been asked by the city's Board of Supervisors to look into a proposal that the City by the Bay join the quixotic quest of the City by the Backside (Richmond) to seize underwater mortgages through the power of eminent domain, write the principal balances down to current fair market value, and, its proponents hope, benefit homeowners who then can then lower their monthly mortgage payments as ride rising home values upward as the economy continues to recover. The only people who get screwed under that arrangement are lenders, but to hell with those capitalist pigs, goes the reasoning.

Ben noted in his report that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have made it clear that cities that use eminent domain for such purposes would threaten the safety and soundness of those two formerly insolvent entities (and Uncle Freddie and Aunt Fannie certainly know unsafe and unsound actions when they engage in them, don't they?). Therefore, "[p]recluding any participation from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the use of eminent domain would seem to be an inviable option." An "inviable option," indeed. Rosenfeld also observed that the eminent domain scheme "hasn’t yet been proven in any jurisdiction in the U.S."

It's doing great on Planet Bizarro, however.

A proponent of the plan was "disappointed" (i.e., threw a hissy fit).

“I’m disappointed that they seem to have bought into Wall Street’s scare tactics about eminent domain,” Avalos said in a statement. He said he plans to call a hearing soon to review the report.

I wonder if, at that hearing, he'll threaten to "socialize" mortgages? That would be the cherry on the top of this fruitcake.

FHFA Takes A Baby Step

Even though she managed to lose the governor's race in heavily-Democratic Massachusetts to a Republican (thereby earning the disdain of Democratic strategist David Axelrod), and even though a federal district court last month dismissed her lawsuit against the FHFA and its wards, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, on the basis that the court system doesn't have the right to "second guess" the FHFA's business judgement (isn't that a novel concept!), Massachusetts AG Martha Coakley still had the gall to issue a public statement about the FHFA's recent decision to back off its policy of refusing to consent to the write-down of loan principal where a foreclosed house is sold back to the defaulting owners.

“The reversal by FHFA of Fannie and Freddie’s policies, which we have long advocated for and brought suit over in part, alters some of their rigid policies to help keep people in their homes,” she said in a statement Tuesday.

To help keep people in their homes who didn't pay their loans as they agreed to pay them and who are getting a better deal than they originally bargained for, at the expense of Uncle Freddie and Aunt Fannie, both of which have been de facto nationalized. I guess that would be a Progressive's orgasmic night dream were it not for the fact that Coakley had absolutely nothing to do with the policy reversal and, more telling, the "reversal" will not help that many homeowners remain in their homes.

However, the impact of the change could be limited. It will only apply to the 121,000 homes that Fannie and Freddie have already foreclosed on and own, a provision that’s intended to curtail any incentive for borrowers in good standing to default. That narrow scope is unlikely to quiet the drumbeat for the FHFA to make bigger changes intended to help a larger number of borrowers who owe more than their homes are worth.

Foreclosed-upon borrowers will also still need to find the cash or financing to buy the old home back at market value, a tall order for those with tarnished credit histories.

“This is a ‘feel-good’ type of policy. It’s directionally helpful to a small number of homeowners that ran into trouble, but at the end of the day, I don’t look to this to have a major policy impact,” said Clifford Rossi, a finance professor at the University of Maryland.

[...]

The new policy in effect reduces mortgage principal, albeit for a small number of foreclosed-upon borrowers. Some nonprofit groups said that Fannie and Freddie would be better served to reduce the borrower’s principal before a foreclosure.

Fannie and Freddie wouldn't be "better served" by such a policy, although delinquent borrowers, Nanny-State lovers, and the fake Native American politicians they so love to lionize would definitely be "better served."

Speaking of which, the fact that 1/32 Cherokee Princess Fauxcahontas went all "jihad" on Mel Watt last week obviously had more to do with this latest publicity stunt than any dismissed lawsuit by a pol who couldn't beat Abu bakr al-Baghdadi in a race for Prime Minister of Israel. You could see the flop sweat flying off of Watt's brow at that Senate hearing like angel dust in the aftermath of a Lindsey Lohan sneezing fit. It's not pretty when a cougar eats her young.

The FHFA's position has long been that it does not want to engage in any process which encourages borrowers to default in order to gain what are, in effect, write downs of underwater mortgages. This is, in theory, especially important in light of the fact that Fannie and Freddie are in conservatorship and, ultimately, it's the American taxpayer on the hook (leaving aside the fact that both entities have become cash cows pouring their profits into the US Treasury). This is only a baby step toward fulfilling the call for widespread write-downs for political ideological humanitarian reasons, but then, every long journey begins with the first step, no matter how tiny. Between now and 2017, it would not be at all surprising to see the pace quicken and the stride lengthen.

Coakley's Special Friend

Massachusetts Attorney General and wanna-be governator, Martha Coakley, has tried to make political capital out of her lawsuit against the FHFA and its wards, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, over their policy of refusing to permit the sale of houses to non-profit organizations who intend to resell the home to the borrowers who have defaulted on the loan secured by a loan that is owned by Aunt Fannie or Uncle Freddie. We last discussed the lawsuit in June.

While Martha has publicly trotted out one of the nonprofits involved in this scheme as a paragon of virtue and the Plantonic ideal form of nonprofit rectitude compared to which all other nonprofits are merely a pale reflection, some investigative reporting has uncovered the fact that the CEO of said nonprofit is a campaign contributoer to Ms. Coakley.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley stands accused of failing to disclose close ties between her gubernatorial campaign and a nonprofit that’s at the center of the State of Massachusetts’ lawsuit against the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over buyback programs.

According to a new report in The Boston Globe, Elyse Cherry, the CEO of Boston Community Capital, is the co-chair of Coakley’s campaign finance committee.

Cherry’s Boston Community Capital is also the focus of a lawsuit filed by Coakley against the FHFA, Fannie and Freddie, which alleges that Fannie and Freddie, currently under FHFA conservatorship, are refusing to comply with the Massachusetts law called “An Act to Prevent Unnecessary and Unreasonable Foreclosures.”

One of the provisions of the law, which was passed in August 2012, prohibits creditors from blocking home sales to non-profits simply because the non-profit intends to resell the property back to the former homeowner.

In the lawsuit, filed in June, Coakley said that these foreclosure buybacks are exactly what the GSEs are preventing by refusing to engage in the buyback program.

When Coakley filed the lawsuit in June on behalf of the State of Massachusetts, she specifically cited Boston Community Capital’s Stabilizing Urban Neighborhoods Initiative as an example of how the Massachusetts buyback program can work.

[...]

But according to the Globe report, Cherry hosted a Coakley fund-raiser mere days before the lawsuit was filed.

From the Globe report:

Though Cherry’s work has drawn high-profile supporters, Coakley’s lawsuit is drawing criticism from a prominent affordable housing advocate who opposes Cherry’s approach and a government ethics champion who says Coakley should have disclosed her ties to Cherry to avoid the appearance she’s doing favors for insiders.

“It’s important that the public knows about private dealings that could potentially affect government action,” said Pam Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause, a nonprofit group that promotes transparency in government.

Coakley said there was no need to file a public disclosure with the State Ethics Commission since Cherry’s $3,250 in state donations to Coakley since 2005, the $1,500 she gave to Coakley’s failed US Senate bid in 2010, and the $5,000 she donated to the Democratic State Committee in September are already matters of public record.

One of the interesting aspects of the criticism of the Cherry-Coak(ley) connection is that much of it is coming not from the Titans of Wall Street, The Top 1%, or Darth Vader, but from folks who you would think would be rising to Coakley's defense. Among these critics is a guy who usually considers no bar is too low to limbo under, as long as the result of dancing under it is the infliction of pain on a lending institution.

Bruce Marks, a longtime housing advocate and chief executive of the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation for America in Jamaica Plain, saidthat Cherry’s buyback program is flawed because Boston Community Capital buys foreclosed-upon homes at a discount from lenders, but doesn’t pass along all the savings to families that were foreclosed upon. Instead, her group typically boosts the resale price by at least 25 percent, Boston-area property records show.

Marks cites Coakley’s yearly salary, $590,000 in 2013, as evidence that she “paints herself as this advocate for the consumer, and it’s the opposite.”

Marks also said that BCC makes money on each home refinance it conducts because BCC marks up the home by 25% above the price it paid to the lender when BCC resells it to the homeowner. According to Marks, borrowers must also bring approximately $5,000 in fees to the closing.

Marks said that BCC charges an interest rate 6.375% for the loans it gives to the previously distressed borrower, which is two percentage points more than what BCC pays for the money it borrows to make the loans.

“If a bank was doing that, you’d charge them with predatory lending,” said Marks, who said his group collects a small fee from banks to help homeowners negotiate a reduced mortgage payment with their lenders.

A two percent spread is predatory lending? C'mon Bruce! Even your running buddies in Havana wouldn't drink that vat of Kool-Aid.

While I doubt that in the Peoples Commonwealth of Massachusetts this particular kerfuffle, standing alone, will cost Martha the governor's crown, the race against Charlie Baker is currently neck-and-neck. When your opponents and a good portion of your supporters gang up to publicly question your conduct on ethical grounds shortly before early voting starts, you're not doing yourself, or the lawsuit that you're waging as much through press releases as through motions and briefs, any favors.

The Rule of Lawlessness

Former FDIC Chairman Bill Isaac's recent rant opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal (paid subscription required) was a masterful smackdown of the current administration's handling of the conservatorships of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Basically, Isaac accuses the executive branch of acting illegally.

The FHFA as conservator is a fiduciary—or trustee—for the shareholders of Fannie and Freddie. Its job is to, as the law says, "conserve [the enterprises'] assets and property" for shareholders while Fannie and Freddie rebuild their capital base and eventually exit the conservatorship.

That's not what has happened. When presented with the once-unthinkable reality of Fannie and Freddie making enough money to retire the Treasury's senior preferred stock and build enough capital to meet their financial obligations without government assistance, the Obama administration moved in 2012 to confiscate all Fannie's and Freddie's profits and wind down the two mortgage giants. Investors in Fannie and Freddie have responded by suing in federal court.

The government is trying to deny the plaintiffs the right to discovery (sound familiar?) because, according to Isaac, it's afraid of what might be revealed.

This information could include emails and other documents demonstrating that the government's true intent was to seize current and future Fannie and Freddie profits for itself and leave shareholders with nothing. To justify its position against granting discovery to plaintiffs, the government argues that disclosure of current and future plans for the conservatorship could be "disruptive to the housing market and to the nation's economy." Almost laughably, the government also argues against disclosure because that could "create market perception that the Enterprises are not financially viable," and that "this would have a negative impact on sales of debt and mortgage-backed securities." Putting aside the circularity of these arguments, the real absurdity is that the government's own activities have deprived Fannie and Freddie of capital and kept them too weak to emerge from conservatorship. By taking all of the enterprises' profits, the government has left them undercapitalized and permanently unable to rebuild their capital.

Isaac asks an obvious, important question: what's does this hijacking mean for the future? His answer is sobering.

Given the government's dereliction in its duty to conserve value in Fannie and Freddie, an obvious question arises pertaining to any "reform" of housing lending proposed by the administration and enacted by Congress. If the administration plans to wind down Fannie and Freddie with no recourse for investors, or to nationalize them in creating a new federal housing entity, as a Senate housing reform bill would do, where will the capital come from to finance the new system? What investor would put capital into something so uncertain and so unprotected by law as Fannie and Freddie have proved to be?

There can be varied opinions over which reform is best for our country or what, if any, role Fannie and Freddie will have in a future housing market. But there should be no disagreement about the law. Capital follows the rule of law, and if investors can't count on that in the U.S. and in the housing markets, they will put their money elsewhere.

"Capital follows the rule of law" applies beyond Aunt Fannie and Uncle Freddie, as important as they may be to the housing market and the economy as a whole. It also applies to the entire banking business.

Those of us who've been representing banks for a number of years (October will mark my 40th year of wandering in that desert) can't recall a time, outside of the relatively brief episode surrounding the collapse of the savings and loan business in certain parts of the country, when the federal government has treated adherence to the rule of law with such elasticity. From the envelope-pushing "disparate impact" doctrine's foray into fair lending (and the use of every artifice to prevent the SCOTUS from having an opportunity to strike it down), to Operation Choke Point and its "informal" enforcement through "informal" regulatory examinations and supervisory pressure, to cases like those of Patrick Adams, whose David-vs.-Goliath struggle seems to serve no purpose other than sending a message that due process is a pipe dream if you fail to knuckle under to a brow beating, to the avalanche of regulations following the enactment of Franken-Dodd, I cannot recall a previous time when community bankers and credit union boards and management have had such a sense of anxiety that borders, in many cases, on despair.

I understand why capital would flow to the Too Big Too Fail. They get hit with a few hundred million here, a few billion there, and rarely miss a beat. They take a licking and keep on ticking. The Too Small To Save don't have that status, and they know it.

Perhaps it's cognitive dissonance. Perhaps its the blind hope that "this, too, shall pass." Perhaps it's simply the fact that "this is what I know how to do and it's all I know how to do, so I'm gonna keep on doin' it until they force me to stop." However, if you have options as to where your capital will flow, how long before you cash in your chips on the banking business and take it to a business where the regulators who can shut you down and/or sue you don't have to take remedial educational courses to learn the basics?

I'm not advocating a course of action, I'm merely asking a question.

Martha Makes Good On Her Threat

Well, Martha Coakley gave Mel Watt only a couple of weeks to fold, and when he didn't, she made good on her threat to sue the FHFA.

Coakley followed up on her threat of litigation and filed a lawsuit against the FHFA and the GSEs in Suffolk Superior Court. The complaint alleges that Fannie and Freddie, currently under FHFA conservatorship, are refusing to comply with the Massachusetts law called “An Act to Prevent Unnecessary and Unreasonable Foreclosures.”

[...]

One of the provisions of the law, which was passed in August 2012, prohibits creditors from blocking home sales to non-profits simply because the non-profit intends to resell the property back to the former homeowner. Coakley says these foreclosure buybacks are exactly what the GSEs are preventing.

[...]

In the complaint, Coakley alleges that two of the FHFA’s policies violate state law. The suit alleges that Fannie and Freddie’s “arm’s-length transaction” policy prohibits property sales to non-profits who resell to the original homeowner.

The suit also alleges that the GSEs “make whole” policy has the same effect, as it prevents Fannie and Freddie from accepting anything less than the outstanding loan amount from the former homeowner or anyone seeking to resell or rent to the former homeowner.

Fannie and Freddie are in conservatorship because too many borrowers haven't repaid mortgage loans that Fannie and Freddie bought and packaged into mortgage backed securities that they then sold to investors, including, among other types of entities, pension funds that thought they were buying a safe, "government-backed" investment. The FHFA, which regulates those two entities, has a duty to the investors (and to Fannie Mae's shareholders, who've been shafted by the government's refusal to stop sucking up all of Fannie's profits, even though all of the government bailout money spent on Fannie and Freddie has been repaid in full) to try to recoup the maximum amount possible from the mortgages that it holds. Not letting defaulting homeowners benefit from a less-than-full-repayment liquidation of a loan makes sense from that policy standpoint.

Coakley believes that state legislation that pushes local economic recovery goals (or homeowner relief social policy goals, depending on your perspective) should be able to trump the policies of the a federal regulator regarding two wards of the federal government. This will be an interesting piece of litigation from the perspective of whether or not the FHFA must amend its policies to comply with such a state law. I don't see any upside for Watt to compromise on the current policies until a court tells him he has to back off and comply with Masschusetts law. At that point, he can tell the investors and shareholders that he had no choice: the judge made him do it.

It's also interesting from the standpoint that Watt and Coakley appear to be on the same side of the fence when it comes to social policy. Watt was a liberal Democrat when he was in the House of Representatives. Moreover, he recently gave a speech that indicated that Fannie and Freddie were going to expand their efforts to provide financing to borrowers with less-than-pristine credit. That was a move that caused a blinding flash of "deja vu all over again" to appear before the eyes of critics of the federal government's housing finance policies that many allege led to the subprime housing bubble and the resulting 2008 economic collapse. However, it was also an indication that rather than winding down Fannie and Freddie and creating a different sort of national residential finance market (which was where we seemed to be heading under Watts predecessor, Ed DeMarco), we may be back on the road to officially re-establishing the two mortgage finance giants as the only game in town, something they've unofficially been since the collapse occurred (and prior to that time, to be honest).

Regardless of the way Coakley's lawsuit plays out, we have the sneaking suspicion that the brave new world of residential mortgage finance may look like the brave old world.

Martha Tries A Carrot And A Stick On Mel

I'm not sure what Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley thinks she's going to accomplish by simultaneously sweet-talking and threatening Mel Watt, but I doubt she's doing much more than engaging in political theater. Maybe she's setting herself up for a run for higher office and wants to make sure that the next time around, she doesn't get a butt-kicking like Scott Brown unleashed on her four years ago.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley reiterated calls Wednesday for the Federal Housing Finance Agency to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to offer principal reductions to distressed borrowers and to participate in nonprofit home buyback programs.

Coakley sent a three-page letter to FHFA Director Mel Watt trying to persuade him that principal reductions could be crafted in such a way to prevent abuses, including what she called "the abstract fear of waves of strategic defaulters."

"Abstract fear"? You'd think that folks like Coakley, adherents to utopian progessivism that denies the reality of human nature and proposes that through the exercise of centralized state power, human beings can be perfected and justice achieved, here on Earth, would know all about "abstract fears," as well as "abstract joys," "abstract hope," and "abstract abstractions."

Nevertheless, in case the risk of strategic defaults might actually be grounded in reality, Coakley had an answer for Watt.

Coakley said one way to reduce strategic defaults would be to adopt clear modification underwriting standards, require a showing of hardship by the borrower and allow lenders to share in the home price appreciation.

Watts' predecessor, Ed DeMarco, adamantly opposed principal reductions. He felt that whole-sale principal write-downs would hurt mortgage bond investors which, in turn, would hurt Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which, in turn, would hurt the mortgage market. Coakley apparently thinks Mel is more sympathetic to a state chief law enforcement officer's sojourn into social policy, especially in the area of mortgage markets, where everyone knows a state attorney general is uniquely qualified to offer business-savvy solutions to thorny problems.

In case Mel is inclined to turn a DeMarco-like deaf ear to her entreaties to do the right thing, Martha whipped a big stick out from behind her back and threatened Mel with a beating if he didn't fall in line.

In the letter, Coakley even threatened to take legal action because the FHFA has refused to take part in buyback programs that allow nonprofits to purchase distressed homes at current market value and immediately resell them to the former homeowner.

"Our office also is considering all available legal avenues—including litigation—to ensure compliance with Massachusetts law, should FHFA fail to promptly amend its policies to allow the GSEs to participate in credible buyback programs," Coakley wrote.

Coakley is using as the basis of her threats the alleged violation by Aunt Fannie and Uncle Freddie of a 2012 Massachusetts law that forbids lenders from refusing to consider buyback offers at "fair market value" solely because the home will eventually be returned to the defaulting homeowner. I assume that DeMarco and Watt believe that a law that vague is likely to be held to be unenforceable against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or perhaps they've just decided to become renegades and ignore the law because they take some perverse pleasure in lawlessness. I'm betting on the former, but I might be wrong.

At any rate, Watt hasn't publicly responded to Coakley (or if he has, the main stream press hasn't reported it). I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the FHFA to cave on this one, although Watt is relatively new in the saddle, and you can't be sure which way he might ride. My guess is that Coakley will have to push her social engineering agenda in court. Pursuing it against a cash cow like the FHFA, which, with its charges in federal conservatorship, is not likely to be scared by the prospect to spending money on trial lawyers.

Fannie Slams The Door Shut

Alleged shenanigans in foreclosure proceedings by lenders' counsel in Colorado, which we've previously discussed here and here, have prompted some serious consequences for two of the law firms fingered in the investigations.

Fannie Mae is not going to send its foreclosure business to two specific law firms in Colorado, effective immediately, the government-sponsored enterprise can confirm.

"Fannie Mae has instructed servicers to cease referrals of new foreclosure cases to Aronowitz & Mecklenburg and the Castle Law Group and to transfer existing cases at those law firms to other firms," said Fannie Mae spokesperson Keosha Burns.

The GSE would not comment on why it so suddenly terminated its relationship with both firms.

As discussed in the previous posts, the Colorado Attorney General's office has been investigating whether the firms inflated costs of foreclosures, either directly or theough the use of captive service firms. The fact that Aunt Fannie would suddeenly drop the bomb on two law firms that handle the majority of its work in Colorado may be an indication that some action from the AG's office is forthcoming and the state regulator gave Fannie Mae a heads-up. If so, the results caused loan servicers in that state some heartburn.

The GSE's decision apparently caught more than a few servicers off-guard this week, and some were scrambling yesterday and today to find additional available legal counsel in the state, HousingWire was told by sources that wished to remain anonymous.

I'm confident that in the land of the over-lawyered, there will be plenty of sharks to eat the prey. One thing the United States does suffer from is an undersupply of lawyers.

HousingWire is one of the few trade press outlets that covers this story. As we've mentioned before, that's odd. It's got all the juicy elements fit for prime time: banks, lawyers, non-paying homeowners, large loan servicers, press-hungry state law enforcement officials: all the favorite enemies or heroes of a narrative, depending upon who's spinning the story. Yet, for some reason, certain major publications seem reluctant to jump on board. Inquiring minds want to know: "Why?"

Stay tuned. This will not be the last word on this troublesome topic.

HUD Defends The Middle Ground

HUD, which took a proactive stance on the controversial doctrine of "disparate impact," issuing regulations that codified the criticized doctrine in order to attempt to require the federal courts that construe it to give HUD's interpretation judicial deference, has decided that when it comes to the equally controversial scheme of a number of municipalities to "condemn" underwater residential mortgage loans, HUD must remain "neutral."

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan kept his carefully neutral stance this week on the potential use of eminent domain to restructure underwater mortgages.

Mortgage and housing industry groups have asked HUD to rule that Federal Housing Administration-insured loans will not be used to refinance mortgages on properties that are condemned and seized by local government under eminent domain.

But Donovan said that the use of eminent domain to force the sale of private-label mortgages out of securitized trusts must be decided by the courts.

There are very specific rules about the use of eminent domain, Donovan said at a Politico event Wednesday, and “it needs to be decided by the courts.”

The application of the doctrine of disparate impact to fair lending laws must also be decided by the courts. That fact hasn't stopped HUD from issuing regulations on the subject. The least the agency could do is to take a stand on the potentially detrimental impact on the residential mortgage lending business, including FHA mortgages, caused by the use of eminent domain to sieze mortgage loans from lenders. The FHFA has weighed in to protect its interests, which happen to be aligned with the lenders from who FNMA and FHLMC buy loans. Why can't HUD?

Perhaps the fact that the expansion of the conflating the disparate impact doctrine into the fair lending arena and a creating a crackpot scheme like condemning mortgage loans are both anti-lender, pro-populist theories dreamed up by Leftist activists might have something to do with it. In HUD's case, as in the FHFA's, hurting lenders harms the agency, so the laws of self-interest would seem to dictate that HUD oppose both of them. Ultimately, however, the losses of HUD are back-stopped by the US taxpayer, and as we all know, neither side of the political spectrum has been overly concerned with taxpayers when it comes to serving a "higher cause."