Articles About House Financial Services Committee

Mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac might find themselves merged into a single government-run entity.  Representative Gary Miller (R-CA) is set to unveil a bill that would create a utility-like entity and phase out government-controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  The new company would buy mortgages and repackage them as government-backed securities.  The […]

American renters who pay more than 50 percent of their income on housing has peaked at the highest level in 50 years, according to a report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. Approximately 26 percent of renters – that’s more than 10 million people – are spending more than 50 percent of their […]

Implementation of the historic Dodd-Frank bill – which President Barack Obama signed into law last July to regulate Wall Street against the excesses that led to the Great Recession — is in danger of being gutted if Republicans’ proposed deep spending cuts become a reality.  Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) pointedly criticized Republicans’ proposal to slash […]

A draft of President Barack Obama’s financial reform legislation has been sent to Congress.  Dubbed the Volcker Rule in honor of the former Federal Reserve chairman’s  aggressive pursuit of these regulations, the five-page proposal will ban proprietary trading and mergers that give banks more than a 10 percent market share as measured by liabilities that […]

Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) wants to scrap Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in favor of an entirely new mortgage-financing system. According to Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and who previously supported the programs, “The committee will be recommending abolishing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in their current forms and coming up with […]

In his semi-annual testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said that although the economy is exhibiting “tentative signs of stabilization,” he plans to maintain a “highly accommodative” monetary policy for the time being.  According to Bernanke, “The pace of decline appears to have slowed significantly.  In light of the […]