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28 WHAT'S WRONG WITH DODD-FRANK? THE GOP SAYS IT HAS THE ANSWER e Republicans vying for the presidential nomination may have disagreed on many topics in the nationally televised debate, but they all pretty much agree on one thing—they don't like Dodd-Frank. Since the controversial Wall Street reform and consumer protection law was enacted in 2010, Republicans have decried it and made numerous attempts to roll it back. Critics of Dodd-Frank say it is overregulating the financial industry and has negatively affected Main Street though it was intended to reform Wall Street. ey say Dodd-Frank makes big banks bigger and crushes community banks. ey have criticized the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which was created out of Dodd-Frank, saying the Bureau does not protect consumers but in fact makes credit tighter and more expensive to obtain. During the debate, Florida Senator and GOP presidential hopeful Marco Rubio called Dodd-Frank an "outrage" that codified too big to fail instead of ending it as it set out to do, or claims to have done. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, now competing for the GOP presidential nomination, criticized the "vast overreach" of Dodd-Frank during the debate. Yet another candidate, former U.S. Congressman and current Ohio Governor John Kasich, said that Dodd-Frank did not solve Wall Street's real problem, which is "too much greed," he said. Interestingly, for years Kasich worked in the investment banking division for Lehman Brothers, the massive financial services firm that famously declared bankruptcy in September 2008. e GOP presidential hopefuls were not the only ones attacking Dodd-Frank, however. American Action Network, a right-leaning Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, paid for a commercial spot during the debate which painted the CFPB as a communist organization that even included a backdrop of gigantic red-shaded banners of CFPB Director Richard Cordray and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), whose efforts are largely responsible for launching the Bureau. e CFPB did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the TV spot, but Warren had plenty to say about it through Twitter. "So... Can we talk about that ad that just ran during the #GOPDebate where I look like a Commie dictator?" she tweeted. Warren defended the Bureau by saying, "Wall Street has a problem: ey know the @CFPB is working, & it's incredibly popular with the families it helps" and "e @CFPB has forced the big financial companies to return more than $11B to people they cheated on credit cards, mortgages, etc." After tweeting that "Wall Street knows if they soften @CFPB support, the GOP will feel better undercutting the agency in closed- door deals," Warren had a parting shot for lawmakers who are fighting to reform the CFPB: "So here's my message to Wall Street & their GOP buddies: we're ready to fight back to protect the @CFPB." Some are saying the attacks on the CFPB will come back to haunt the GOP, painting them as being against consumers and in favor of predatory financial practices. Even Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton weighed in on the issue via Twitter. e TV spot that ran several times during the debate may have just been a primer—some reports suggest that the American Action Network will produce more ads attempting to discredit the CFPB. And the debate will continue. DISTRESSED SALES CONTINUE DESCENT TOWARD HISTORICAL NORMS e share of distressed home sales that comprise all residential home sales in the United States continued its steady decline in August and is less than three years away from reaching its historical "normal" level, according to data released by CoreLogic. e distressed sales share, which includes sales of REO properties and short sales, was reported to be 9.3 percent for August 2015, down 2.3 percentage points from August 2014. August's distressed sales share of 9.3 percent is the lowest since September 2007 and is less than a third off from its peak in January 2009, when it made up nearly a third of total residential home sales (32.4 percent). Within the distressed sales category, 6 percent were REO properties and 3.3 percent were short sales, according to CoreLogic. During the peak for distressed sales in January 2009, the REO properties made up 27.9 percent of all home sales. e share of short sales fell below 4 percent in mid-2014 and has stayed around the 3 to 4 percent level since. CoreLogic stated in the report that when the share of distressed sales is high, it can pull down non-distressed home prices because distressed properties sell at a discount to non- distressed homes. CoreLogic pointed out that while distressed sales are important in clearing out the inventory of foreclosed properties, there will always be some level of distress in the housing market, and if the current year-over- year rate of decline continues, the distressed sales share should fall to its pre-recession "normal" level of 2 percent by the middle of 2018. e five states with the highest distressed sales share in August 2015 were Maryland (20.8 percent), Florida (20.3 percent), Michigan (19.9 percent), Connecticut (19.1 percent), and Illinois (18.7 percent), while the state with the lowest distressed sales share during the month was North Dakota (2.7 percent). Despite the steady declines, only North Dakota and Washington, D.C., were within one point of their pre-crisis distressed sales share in August. Of the largest metro areas based on loan count, Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, Florida, had the largest distressed sales share in August at 23.4 percent. e metro area with the largest decline from its peak was Riverside- San Bernardino-Ontario, California, which experienced a drop from its peak of 76.3 percent in February 2009 to 11.4 percent in August 2015. The ratio of non-foreclosure solutions (118,000) to foreclosure completions (27,000) in August 2015. Foreclosure completions in August 2015 were nearly a quarter of their total at the peak of the foreclosure crisis five years ago, in August 2010 (100,000). Source: HOPE NOW STAT INSIGHT 4 to 1

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