Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Somebody help me out here

The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, signed into law in July, which authorized the recent takeover of Fannie and Freddy, also provided for the merger of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) with the Federal Housing Finance Board (FHFB) to join a new Federal Housing Finance Authority (FHFA). The new organization will have oversight over the 14 GSEs, which is to say F & F and the twelve Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBs).

The FHFA will be run by the former head of OFHEO, which used to supervise F & F, during the period in which they brought lots of crap onto their balance sheets and ran themselves into the ground in an effort not to cede market share to the investment banks in the exciting new frontiers of mortgage risk.

The FHFB, chartered in 1989 during the S & L party as a successor to the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, formerly oversaw the FHLBs, which have remained a crucial lifeline of liquidity to mortgage lenders throughout the crisis.

In short, the reorg of regulatory agencies gives empowers management of the agency that failed at the expense of the one that succeeded.

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