After reviewing the White House’s surprise housing-finance reform package, we checked around a bit to find out if we need take it seriously. Answer: no. The GSE “privatization” plan was crafted by OMB in concert with many other symbolic “drain-the-swamp” initiatives doomed to settle to the bottom of the muck. Treasury put its energy with OMB into ensuring that it could not be characterized as recap-and-release. After that, it stepped back to continue its own work on what will really happen after Mel Watt’s term ends early in 2019.
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