Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told Congress yesterday that he now aims to reform the bailed-out government-sponsored enterprises next Congress, and delivered a message to the companies’ government caretaker to stop allowing them to expand their missions, the Washington Examiner reported. “We need GSE reform,” Mnuchin said yesterday during testimony before the House Financial Services Committee. “This is something that I am determined, in the next Congress, should be a major focus of ours — hopefully on a bipartisan basis. But we can’t just leave these things sitting the way they are as they have been.” Mnuchin, a former banker involved in housing finance, came into office pledging to end the government’s conservatorship of Fannie and Freddie, ongoing since the financial crisis in 2008. But Congress barely got going on reform. Mnuchin said yesterday that he would consider administrative options if Congress does not act next session.
