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impossible to get the private sector to commit capital again. GSE reform is undoubtedly a critical area for the next-term president. Without reform, it will be almost limit the mortgage interest deduction to primary residences, he also let slip that HUD might find its way to the chopping block under his administration. "I'm going to take a lot of departments in Washington and agencies and combine them. Some eliminate, but I'm probably not going to lay out just exactly which ones are going to go," reporters overheard the presidential hopeful saying. "Things like Housing and Urban Development, which my dad was head of, that might not be around later. But I'm not going to actually go through these one by one. What I can tell you is, we've got far too many bureaucrats. I will send a lot of what happens in Washington back to the states." The two candidates' ideas of financial reform an affirmative turnaround in the economy in general. "I don't expect any magic bullet in terms of policy that will address the foreclosure crisis," she said. "It's clear we have a big problem with all of these households that are deeply underwater. It's going to take years for them to get in a position where they aren't underwater." Obama and some members of Congress are widely divergent. If the American people re-elect Obama, the financial reform archetype passed under his administration—the Dodd- Frank Act—will remain largely intact. Should the people usher in a new commander-in-chief, Dodd-Frank will take a trimming at the very least. Remaining true to his mantra of too many bureaucrats, Romney has vowed to repeal the 848-page sweeping legislation. Romney's campaign website says he will replace it "with streamlined, modern regulatory framework," but Romney has not said specifically what he would put in its place. In spite of Republicans' talk of doing away pushed the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to allow principal reductions on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages when the borrower's debt is more than the value of the home. Edward DeMarco, FHFA's acting director, has resisted, and in July he sent a letter to the heads of the Senate banking committee re-stating he would not allow the GSEs to perform principal reductions because the agency's analysis failed to show that the benefits would outweigh the associated costs and risks. Obama's head of Treasury, Timothy Geithner, responded to DeMarco with his own letter imploring the FHFA director to reconsider, citing figures from the same FHFA analysis which he said demonstrated taxpayers would save as much as $1 billion from averted mortgage defaults and foreclosures if principal- reducing modifications were on the table. In 2011 in Las Vegas, Romney shared his with Dodd-Frank, experts like Dynan say it would be difficult to take down the whole thing in its entirety, partly because some measures of the act are already implemented. According to Davis Polk & Wardwell, a New York-based law firm that specializes in regulatory matters, as of July 18, 123 of the 398 total rulemaking requirements of Dodd-Frank had been finalized. Rules have been proposed for 134 of the legislation's mandates, and 141 have not yet made it to the proposal stage. On the foreclosure crisis—a Main Street issue that has left millions of American families with no place to call home—the next president, according to Dynan, will be best served by 72 impromptu press conference from Washington, D.C. "I don't know what's more graphic than that, in how we [Democrats] have different views of what the world should be like than our Republican friends." But Romney's ideology is the same that's championed by housing analysts and industry experts across the country, that the best thing we could do for the housing market is clear out all the stalled foreclosures assigned to homes that have been abandoned and homes whose occupants have not made a good-faith effort to bring their accounts current. "The Obama administration has slow walked the foreclosure processes that have long existed," Romney told Las Vegas constituents, "and as a result, we still have a foreclosure overhang." Whichever side of the fence they're on, the next president will almost certainly face opposition. As Dynan relayed it, if the government has a dollar, "do you put it toward writing down a mortgage, or do you give it to a state to keep a teacher from getting laid off? A lot of people think, I played by the rules. I bought a modest home with a mortgage I could afford while the guy down the street bought a mansion that he couldn't afford, and he was going back and using his house like an ATM. Why should he get bailed out at the taxpayer's expense?" Dynan said. Probably the most important housing-related views on foreclosure intervention measures. "Don't try to stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom," he told the local Review-Journal in an interview ahead of a scheduled GOP presidential debate. "Allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes, and let it turn around and come back up."Critics were floored that Romney had the chutzpah to make such remarks in the state with the nation's highest foreclosure rate, where one of every seven houses sits vacant. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) was first to step up with a retort. "Nevada has the highest foreclosure rate in America, and it has for almost three years. And here's what Mitt Romney said: He would just let them hit rock bottom," Reid said during an issue the winner of November's election will face is the impending "fiscal cliff" jutting up at the end of 2012. This monetary precipice took shape from the national tax and spending provisions set to expire December 31. The government's decision, whether to extend or extinguish, will affect the whole economy. The Congressional Budget Office predicts an impending recession if Congress and the president don't hit on a resolution before we come to the edge of the cliff at year-end. Housing-related policies the next president will favor over the next four years can, for the most part, be deduced from other Republican and Democratic elected officials. U.S. Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Illinois), chairman of the House Insurance, Housing, and Community Opportunity Subcommittee, offers one Republican view. To help foster a housing recovery, Biggert supports measures such as flood insurance reform; the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act, signed into law this year, provides

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