James Pethokoukis

Cato’s Mark Calabria makes a powerful case for doing so:

First, we should recognize that the 30-year fixed isn’t going anywhere. The “jumbo” mortgage market offers a 30-year fixed without a government guarantee. In fact, fixed-rate mortgages have historically been around half of the jumbo market.

Of course it is more expensive — but more expensive to the borrower does not mean more expensive to society. After all, someone has to pay for a subsidy. In all likelihood, it is that same homeowner who will pay for the subsidy in their role as taxpayer.

The difference between 30-year jumbo and conforming loans has been about 30 to 40 basis points. There are lots of reasons for this spread; the existence of a federal guarantee is only one of them.

In the absence of a federal guarantee, rates would likely go up somewhere between 10 and 30 basis points. That smallish jump would not have any impact on homeownership rates and is hardly an amount worth putting our entire financial system at risk.

The Obama White House finally has a kinda-sorta housing plan. But here is the thing: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, seized by the U.S. government back in 2008, don’t possess the political clout they used to. But the two mortgage finance giants still have a network with shared interests. That lingering influence is a big reason why they — or possibly similar-looking replacements — will be around for a while longer.

The White House and congressional Republicans agree that housing finance, a big contributor to the recent financial crisis, needs a sweeping overhaul. That includes dramatically reducing or eliminating the role of Fannie and Freddie, which have soaked up more than $150 billion in taxpayer aid since the federal takeover. But it looks like President Barack Obama’s team can’t decide on a single plan and will instead offer a menu of options for reducing government’s role in housing. And while the GOP is adamant it wants to wind down Fannie and Freddie as soon as possible, it doesn’t seem ready to start quite yet.

Rash moves are unwise when U.S. housing remains mired in a deep downturn. But all the Washington waffling isn’t a sign of prudence. A reform roadmap is way overdue. Unfortunately, inaction is tempting when pain is near and benefits distant. Democrats and Republicans are also up against an onslaught from the potential losers if the government ends or sharply reduces its support of the residential mortgage market — currently channeled through Fannie and Freddie.

And there are plenty of those folks. Real estate agents and homebuilders, of course, want housing credit to be as widely available as possible. The very existence of mortgage insurers depends on Fannie and Freddie’s requirements. Big banks are used to offloading mortgages via the securitization market which, though currently in the dumps, was formerly greased by the safety and uniformity of the government backstop. Small banks, meanwhile, worry that big banks would dominate a private-sector mortgage market. And mortgage bond investors are fearful of even a gradual removal of government support.

Overall, the real estate industry gave nearly $70 million to candidates in the most recent congressional election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Together with the other constituencies, there’s considerable juice to stymie legislation. Sadly, the biggest hole in financial reform may continue to gape at least until the next Congress takes office in 2013.

And while we are on the topic of mortgages, I wrote this piece for Reuters Breakingviews yesterday:

Is it time for another “free” lunch? One Wall Street idea to boost U.S. growth is for the government to loosen rules so millions more Americans can refinance mortgages, thereby freeing up cash for spending. A desperate Washington might be tempted, but should think twice. It’s too reminiscent of how the economy first fell into trouble.

A top Morgan Stanley economist ran the “slam dunk stimulus” plan past the Senate Budget Committee on Tuesday. With the political mood making it almost impossible to contemplate spending more taxpayer money to juice demand, the bank’s economists are suggesting a different route to a stimulus — namely having government-run mortgage lenders loosen the refinancing rules on 37 million mortgages they currently guarantee. That would open the door to many homeowners who haven’t been able to take advantage of the current low interest rates because they owe more than their homes are worth, are unemployed or have low credit scores.

The logic is that with the government already on the hook for these loans, there’s nothing to lose from dispensing with any creditworthiness criteria for refinancing. The median interest rate on the mortgages concerned is 5.75 percent. These loans, the thinking goes, could be refinanced to around 4.50 percent. The 125 basis-point reduction would leave a borrower with a typical $200,000 mortgage better off to the tune of $2,500 a year. If, as Morgan Stanley guesstimates, half the affected homeowners took advantage of this, they would collectively have an extra $46 billion a year burning a hole in their pockets.

One problem is that the government has already tried to streamline the refinancing process with little success. Another is figuring out who would pay any associated fees. But most importantly, the whole idea seems like a deliberate re-creation of the super-cheap credit and lax lending standards that led to the financial crisis in the first place. That’s counter to the White House message that America needs a “new foundation” built on fiscal prudence.

Then again, the approach of elections in November means Washington is filled with jittery politicians who might latch onto a “hair of the dog” fix for a sluggish economy. Better they push themselves away from the bar.

The Treasury Department has officially denied it is planning the mother of all mortgage bailouts. And I have no reason to doubt Team Geithner. But of course that assumes that the whole idea was not being cooked up by the White House political team (Rahm and Ax) and not the good folks at Treasury. During the financial reform debate, banking lobbyists continually complained that Geither and Summers had been usurped by R&A in policymaking. And I have gotten zero pushback from the WH. Food for thought. More to come.

But here are some of the reactions to my piece:

1. A New $800 Billion Stimulus Through Fannie and Freddie? (Dan Indiviglio of The Atlantic)

2. Is Obama about to forgive billions in  mortgage principal? (Ed Morrissey of Hot Air)

3. An August Surprise from Obama (The Daily Caller)

4.  Help coming for homeowners (Kevin Drum of Mother Jones)

5. An August Surprise from Obama? (Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit)

6. White House to bail out underwater mortgages? (Moe Lane at Red State)

Main Street may be about to get its own gigantic bailout. Rumors are running wild from Washington to Wall Street that the Obama administration is about to order government-controlled lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forgive a portion of the mortgage debt of millions of Americans who owe more than what their homes are worth. An estimated 15 million U.S. mortgages – one in five – are underwater with negative equity of some $800 billion. Recall that on Christmas Eve 2009, the Treasury Department waived a $400 billion limit on financial assistance to Fannie and Freddie, pledging unlimited help. The actual vehicle for the bailout could be the Bush-era Home Affordable Refinance Program, or HARP, a sister program to Obama’s loan modification effort. HARP was just extended through June 30, 2011.

The move, if it happens, would be a stunning political and economic bombshell less than 100 days before a midterm election in which Democrats are currently expected to suffer massive, if not historic losses. The key date to watch is August 17 when the Treasury Department holds a much-hyped meeting on the future of Fannie and Freddie. A few key points:

1) Republican leaders believe this is going to happen since GOPers and Democratic moderates in the Senate are unwilling to spend more taxpayer money on more stimulus. But such a housing plan would allow the White House to sidestep congressional objections and show voters it is doing something tangible about an economy that seems to be weakening.

2) Wall Street banks are alerting their clients privately to this possibility. Here is what some are cautiously saying publicly. This from Goldman Sachs:

GSE policies are one of a dwindling number of policy levers the administration has left to pull, so it is conceivable that changes could be made, though there is no sign that a policy change is imminent. The Treasury’s essentially unlimited ability to provide financial support to the GSEs creates an interesting situation over the next twelve months: the GSEs could potentially be used to provide additional support for the housing market and, to a lesser extent, the broader economy in 2H 2001.

And this from Mizuho Securities:

As policy makers ponder their next move the data suggests that they face not only a stalling recovery but a growing risk of deflation taking root in the economy. As a result, the Administration has turned back to industrial policies by approving the purchase of a sub-prime auto lender by GM as a means for pumping  up domestic sales, especially since the latest auto sales data indicates that consumers are still responsive to incentives. This precedent increases the risk that the government will use its control of Fannie and Freddie to increase consumer cash flow and juice the economy again.

Moreover, Morgan Stanley is pushing a mortgage relief plan directly to Congress. On August 3, a top Morgan Stanley economist recommended to the Senate Budget Committee that Fannie and Freddie ease their lending standards to allow millions of Americans to refinance their mortgages.

3) Keep in mind the political and economic context. The nascent recovery is already running out of steam. Wall Street economists just downgraded the government’s second-quarter GDP estimate of 2.4 percent to around 1.7 percent. And as even Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is warning, the unemployment rate may well begin to rise back toward the politically toxic 10 percent level given such sluggish growth. Many in the White House thought the unemployment rate would be dropping sharply by this point in the recovery.

But that is not happening. What is happening is that the president’s approval ratings are continuing to erode, as are Democratic election polls. Democrats are in real danger of losing the House and almost losing the Senate. The mortgage Hail Mary would be a last-gasp effort to prevent this from happening and to save the Obama agenda. The political calculation is that the number of grateful Americans would be greater than those offended that they — and their children and their grandchildren — would be paying for someone else’s mortgage woes.

4) And don’t think the White House is worried about financial market reaction. If they thought it would pass Congress, they would be submitting a $200 billion Stimulus  2.0  (3.0?, 4.0?) right now.

August is supposed to be a slow month for Washington politics. But maybe not this one.

So the Treasury Department announces unlimited support for Fannie Mae Freddie Mac for the next thee years. I think Wall Street Pit raises a very provocative point on this might all relate to the 2010 election:

In an attempt to limit the damage the economy does to their majority in the 2010 elections, the administration is likely to go all in on mortgage modifications that require principal reduction. They can only take so much skin off of the banks in this effort and the last thing they want is to put the financial system back in another crunch. That leave Fannie and Freddie as the vehicles to bail out homeowners that so far have resisted efforts to “save” them. It makes perfect sense that the Treasury’s announcement of unlimited support would be followed by a big, new homeowner bailout program.

Business Insider also touches on this:

Revisions to the flagging Homeowner Affordable Housing Program (HAMP). Any changes will likely increase near term bailout costs to Fannie and Freddie if HAMP’s current reliance on interest reduction is replaced in part by principal reduction. The losses associated with a modification of a loan using an interest rate reduction are spread out over time while a modification using principal reduction results in taking a more immediate loss.

As does Calculated Risk:

There is a possibility that the Treasury is planning on introducing a principal reduction component to HAMP in January, and this could lead to significantly larger losses for Fannie and Freddie (just speculation on my part). There has been no announcement yet, and even if this is proposed it might only apply to Fannie and Freddie related loans, and not private MBS (the number of Fannie/Freddie loans compared to private MBS varies significantly by servicer).

A great point made by the Tax Foundation about the National Association of Realtors and its support of the homebuyer tax credit:

When the economy is recovered, is the NAR going to support its elimination? Not a chance. There’s a better chance of Glenn Beck being appointed to Obama’s cabinet than NAR ever advocating for eliminating a tax preference for housing.

Assuming the homebuyer credit is extended to June 30, 2010, come May next year the NAR and NAHB lobbyists will be on Capitol Hill again saying that the economy still hasn’t recovered. And then when it’s extended for another year and the economy is fully recovered, they’ll be saying things like “we can’t afford to go back to where we were 18 months ago with lower home prices.” By then, it will be permanent, and any time discussion of repealing it or scaling it down is brought to the forefront, NAR will cite how home prices are going to fall if it’s repealed. You get what Milton Friedman called a tyranny of the status quo, or an endowment effect of a tax provision.

My Reuters colleagues give the tale of the tape:

Obama, grappling with the worst U.S. housing crisis since the Great Depression, pledged to help as many as 9 million families keep their homes by reworking their mortgages.

Eight months later, the plan is plagued by delays, red tape and, some critics say, a reluctance by banks to do their part. Just 17 percent of eligible borrowers have had their loans modified and monthly payments cut. Hardly any have been given a cut in the amount they owe on homes which are now worth less.

That means many successful applicants are left with loans that they still will not be able to afford in the long run. So instead of resolving the housing crisis that pushed the U.S. economy into recession, America may be prolonging it and, in the process, stunting the global recovery.

“Every single policy we’ve seen has merely kicked the problem down the road,” said Laurie Goodman, a veteran analyst at broker-dealer Amherst Securities Group LP, which specializes in residential mortgage-backed securities.

Me: Clearly at this point the best housing policy is an overall economic policy that boost growth and jobs — and let housing find its own level.

There are, to be sure, lots of villains to blame for America’s financial crisis: regulators, Wall Street executives, credit ratings agencies, Alan Greenspan.

But the one baddie Washington doesn’t want to touch is, well, Washington. Its crime: pushing federal policies that favored ever-increasing home ownership, particularly from the mid-1990s on, and thus helping spawn the housing bubble at the center of the devastating meltdown. (We’ll focus on its legacy of financial bailouts another time.)

The sheer scope of the bipartisan, federal pro-housing undertaking is mind-boggling.

As Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard University economist, noted in testimony this week to the House Financial Services Committee, a list of past and ongoing efforts would include the Federal Housing Administration, Federal Home Loan Banks, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Community Reinvestment Act, the deductibility of mortgage interest, the tax-favored treatment of capital gains on housing, the HOPE for Homeowners Act and the $8000 homebuyer tax credit.

Then, of course, there are the Federal Reserve’s efforts to bring down mortgage rates.

The federal tax subsidy alone amounts to some $200 billion a year, according to the Tax Policy Center. Put it all together and it’s clear that Uncle Sam created immense incentives for home ownership, from which Wall Street eventually found a way to coin huge profits.

Well, at least for a while. Even former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker conceded this week to the same committee that government housing efforts, in the form of Fannie and Freddie, were a “factor” in the crisis.

But while Washington is creating financial regulations and regulators, going after banker pay and questioning the role of the ratings firms, it seems intent on leaving its pro-housing policy bias intact.

That may be necessary for a while, until the housing market finds it legs. But then it’s time for Uncle Sam to gradually get out of the housing business. Breaking up and privatizing Fannie and Freddie would be a good start to an exit strategy, as would phasing out the mortgage interest deduction.

The risk of maintaining the status quo isn’t so much that we’ll have another housing bubble. Rather, it is the continuing opportunity cost of devoting so much precious capital toward housing.

Finding a better use for $200 billion a year in a country with a crumbling infrastructure, a yawning budget deficit and an uncompetitive tax system shouldn’t be hard.

Fellow Reuters columnist Rolfe Winkler has it. Exactly. Right:

What Cash 4 Clunkers did for cars, the first time home buyer credit is doing for housing — pulling future demand into the present. Count on home sales to head back down after this tax credit disappears.