Even after costing American taxpayers $150 billion since their government takeover, public-private mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should not be subject to greater public transparency, says their federal regulator.

 

Edward DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, told Congress last week that Fannie and Freddie “did not cease to be private legal entities when they were placed into conservatorship.” In addition, making them comply with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests would be costly, according to DeMarco, “as they will incur significant operational and compliance costs in establishing and administering a function to respond to such information requests.”

 

Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) disagrees, and has introduced legislation that would apply FOIA to Fannie and Freddie while they are under government conservatorship.

 

A counter-argument to DeMarco’s says opening up Fannie and Freddie to more scrutiny could save the government money by exposing bad decision-making sooner.

 

The two companies were nationalized at the peak of the financial crisis in 2008, after years of acquiring toxic mortgages that threatened their financial solvency.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Fannie and Freddie’s Regulator Opposes Making Mortgage Giants Subject to FOIA (by Marian Wang, ProPublica)

Fannie, Freddie Regulator Criticizes FOIA Bill (by Ronald Orol, MarketWatch)