meet the obscure federal regulator who is not helping home owners

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http://www.nationofchange.org/meet-obscure-federal-regulator-who-s-not-helping-homeowners-1328629296

Last week, ProP­ub­lica and NPR raised ques­tions about a risky in­vest­ment strat­egy at Fred­die Mac that would pay off if home­own­ers stayed trapped in ex­pen­sive mort­gages. It's just the lat­est ex­am­ple of how gov­ern­ment-owned Fred­die Mac and Fan­nie Mae have frus­trated many by not putting home­own­ers first.

Fan­nie and Fred­die are re­quired to help home­own­ers while earn­ing prof­its so they can pay back the tax­pay­ers who bailed them out. Here is our guide to the lit­tle-known fed­eral reg­u­la­tor, Ed­ward De­Marco, ul­ti­mately in charge of the two com­pa­nies. You may have never heard of him, but as The Wash­ing­ton Post put it, he's "the most pow­er­ful man in hous­ing pol­icy."

The ba­sics

In the sum­mer of 2008, as part of a larger eco­nomic stim­u­lus bill amid the sub­prime mort­gage cri­sis, Pres­i­dent George W. Bush cre­ated the Fed­eral Hous­ing Fi­nance Agency, com­bin­ing sev­eral agen­cies over­see­ing hous­ing pol­icy, and in­creas­ing reg­u­la­tion of gov­ern­ment-spon­sored en­ter­prises like Fan­nie and Fred­die. When the gov­ern­ment bailed out Fan­nie and Fred­die a few months later, the FHFA took charge of them.

De­Marco, a life­long reg­u­la­tor, was named the act­ing head of the FHFA roughly a year after the bailout when his Bush-ap­pointed pre­de­ces­sor stepped down. Obama nom­i­nated a con­sumer-friendly re­place­ment for De­Marco in Oc­to­ber 2010, but Re­pub­li­cans blocked him. (Re­pub­li­can op­po­si­tion to Obama's nom­i­nee for De­Marco's suc­ces­sor stemmed in part from con­cerns that he would push banks and oth­ers too far to help home­own­ers, un­fairly re­ward­ing reck­less bor­row­ers.)