Government

Amid calls from the Obama administration for a more stable housing market—particularly where affordable housing is concerned—Michael Stegman, counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury for Housing Finance Policy, Thursday called for top-down reforms that would rewire how the federal government funds and regulates both government and private-label securities. He also criticized a pair of "implausible scenarios" that would either leave the GSE system to amend itself or rely on minor revisions.

According to the Labor Department, the U.S. economy added 175,000 jobs in February, beating expectations after two weak months but still failing to impress. While more promising than December and January—which showed upwardly revised payroll growth of 84,000 and 129,000, respectively—February’s numbers still fell well short of 2013’s average monthly growth of 194,000.

A regulator who recently took actions to curb growth at Ocwen has now turned his eye to Nationstar. In a letter addressed to the company, Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of New York's Department of Financial Services, said his agency has concerns "that the explosive growth at Nationstart and other nonbank mortgage servicers may create capacity issues that put homeowners at risk."

In a conference call Tuesday, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan discussed the agency's proposed fiscal year 2015 budget, which is up 2.6 percent from current levels to $46.66 billion. Joining Donovan was Carol Galante, commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), which last year was forced to accept its first-ever Treasury draw—an incident her agency is expected to avoid this year.

In identical letters addressed to the boards of each enterprise, Bruce Berkowitz, managing member and chief investment officer of Fairholme Capital Management, urges the directors at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to “act in the best interests of each company and in accordance with accepted best practices for corporate governance.”

A new bill designed to reform the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is on its way to the U.S. Senate after passing in the house. H.R. 3193 (the Consumer Financial Freedom and Washington Accountability Act) was created to bring more "accountability and transparency" to the agency, according to Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wisconsin), the bill's sponsor.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced the appointment of Egbert L. J. Perry as chair of Fannie Mae’s board of directors. Perry will replace the outgoing Philip A. Laskawy, who will step down at the end of March.

The government’s latest report shows spending on all construction projects was up 0.1 percent from December, coming to an estimated seasonally adjusted annual rate of $943.1 billion. That figure is 9.3 percent ahead of January 2013’s estimate of $863.1 billion. Economists polled by Reuters had expected a 0.5 percent decline in spending to follow December’s originally reported 0.1 percent improvement.

In the second of three planned reports, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) put gross domestic product (GDP) growth at an annual rate of 2.4 percent in Q4 2013, down from its initial estimate of 3.2 percent in January and its final report of 4.1 percent in the third-quarter. Full-year growth is estimated at 1.9 percent compared to 2.8 percent in 2012.

Despite declines in Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey throughout the month, national data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) shows mortgage rates about a tenth of a percent from December to January. Based on a collection of data from a small monthly survey of lenders, FHFA reports the contract rate for the composite of all mortgage loans closed in January was 4.36 percent, up 11 basis points from December.