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58 guarantors are required to be fully capitalized after the enactment of the legislation replacing the current affordable housing goals and duty-to-serve requirements with a new Market Access Fund which will provide grants, loans, and credit enhancements to address the homeownership and rental housing needs of the underserved and low-income communities. In a statement at the time, Crapo said, "We must expeditiously fix our flawed housing finance system. My priorities are to establish stronger levels of taxpayer protection, preserve the 30-year fixed rate mortgage, increase competition among mortgage guarantors, and promote access to affordable housing." Treasury Secretary Mnuchin supported the plan, saying, "Protecting American taxpayers by ensuring the safety and stability of the United States housing finance system is a priority for the Treasury Department. e outline for housing reform legislation released by Chairman Crapo is a productive first step toward that goal, and I applaud him for his efforts." Crapo's plan came only weeks after Politico reported that FHFA Acting Director Joseph Otting reportedly told staffers that the agency would be announcing plans to remove the GSEs from conservatorship soon. e White House swiftly walked those remarks back, with White House Spokeswoman Lindsay Walters releasing a statement that read, "e White House expects to announce a framework for the development of a policy for comprehensive housing finance reform shortly. At this time, no decisions have been made on any reform plan. As part of the process, however, the administration will work with Congress to formulate a plan that fully addresses the risks to taxpayers presented by the current housing finance system and that improves the ability of creditworthy Americans to buy a home." Unsurprisingly, the topic again came up during the Congressional confirmation hearings for new FHFA Director Mark Calabria in February. When it comes to any potential GSE reforms, Calabria said that his role as Director of FHFA would be to "carry out the clear intent of Congress, not impose my own vision." THE CASE FOR THE CURRENT SYSTEM Just because GSE reform is a topic that inspires debate, that doesn't mean it's a given that broad reforms of the existing system are a universal desire among those who interact with or within that system. "e GSEs are doing a good job ensuring broad access to long-term fixed-rate lending while pushing off the lion's share of the credit risk into the private market," said Jim Parrott, Owner, Falling Creek Advisors and a Nonresident Fellow at the Urban Institute. However, Parrott points out that the current system still remains beholden to a privately owned 'too big to fail' duopoly, "which doesn't pose a systemic risk only because they have been put into conservatorship." He added, "We need to be clearer about the role we want private capital to play in the system and what role we want the government to play in the system—as right now the roles are utterly conflated." Michael Bright, President and CEO, Structured Finance Industry Group, previously served as the EVP and COO of Ginnie Mae, where he worked to advance a "commitment to modernization." He also threw his name into the GSE reform fray in September 2016, when Bright and former FHFA Acting Director Ed DeMarco co-authored a paper entitled "Toward a New Secondary Mortgage Market." e paper proposed broad GSE reforms that would "end the conservatorships, reconstitute Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as lender-owned mutuals, and build on the credit risk transfer (CRT) initiative to create a private market for mortgage credit risk while preserving a government-guaranteed rates market for mortgage-backed securities." In addition, Bright and DeMarco proposed removing Ginnie Mae from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and converting it into a standalone government corporation like FDIC, "with authority over its own budget, hiring, and compensation." With the current subsidized system allowing Fannie and Freddie to issue debt at "e GSEs are in such a tenuous position, and therefore so is the housing market, because if you have another credit event—which you're likely to have—the taxpayers are in a first-loss position." —Tim Rood, Chairman, The Collingwood Group