Senior Trump administration officials are discussing how to jump-start an overhaul of mortgage finance, with the new federal overseer of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pledging to act with “a great sense of urgency” over the coming months, the Wall Street Journal reported. “The foundations of our mortgage finance system remain vulnerable, and we must not let this opportunity for reform pass,” Mark Calabria, the new head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said yesterday. His agency regulates Fannie and Freddie, the two mortgage-finance companies that back about half of the U.S. mortgage market. As the FHFA’s new chief, Calabria is set to play a critical role in the Trump administration’s efforts to address a remnant of the financial crisis: Washington’s control over Fannie and Freddie, which have been under government conservatorship since the 2008 financial crisis. The Senate confirmed Calabria along party lines this month. Calabria’s comments come after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in an interview last week that he wants to develop a plan to overhaul Fannie and Freddie over the next six months. Doing it through legislation would be the administration’s first choice, he said, but it would look for “things we could do on an administrative basis” absent action from Congress, he said.
