In the new duty-to-serve rule, FHFA has in essence required Fannie and Freddie to serve as national centers for product development, investment, and securitization across a range of low-income, rural, and manufactured-housing products.  Depending on how the GSEs implement these requirements – and we expect Fannie to do so with gusto – community bankers and credit unions across the country will have a new reason to press hard for transformation of the GSEs into utilities – not government corporations or backstop guarantors – when the GSE-reform battle is joined in earnest next year.

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