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62 So, without that, the cost of mortgages goes up significantly." Speaking out, Murin urges the industry, when expressing policy ideals and perspectives, to realize how vital housing and the mortgage industry is to the American economy and to the American worker, especially the middle class and the lower to moderate middle class. "Everybody should be guaranteed a roof over his or her head," Murin said. "I don't necessarily think everybody should be guaranteed to own a home because that's illogical but we have to focus on consistent mortgage credit for lower and moderate-income Americans to ultimately become a homeowner at some point in their life." Murin continued, "at's where our focus should be. Let's start with the foundation, let's rebuild the foundation, let's commit to that foundation of stability with housing of some kind to bring that family unit back together." TURNING IDEAS INTO ACTION According to DeMarco, the principles to base an ideal housing policy on are first, fix what's broken and then preserve what works in support of consumers in the market. Second, the transition from the old system to the new one should avoid disrupting consumers and markets. ird, private capital should bear all but catastrophic mortgage credit risk, so that market discipline contains risk. DeMarco notes that the government should provide an explicit full facing credit guarantee on mortgage-backed securities (MBS), but with a preset mechanism to ensure any catastrophic loses that call upon taxpayers, support will be repaid fully. Next, government should provide a regula- tory framework that is clear and equitable across all participating companies and ensures that participants in the housing finance system oper- ate in a safe and sound manner. Additionally, replace the government protected GSE duopoly with a structure that serves consumers by promoting competition, affordability, transparency, innovation, market efficiency, and broad consumer access to a range of mortgage products. Replace the separate Fannie Mae and Fred- die Mac MBS with a single deep and liquid MBS that has multiple issuers, backed by private capital, and wrapped with a government guaran- tee. And implement the common securitization infrastructure that operates with a uniform set of standards for mortgage servicing, investor disclosure, and dispute resolution. Finally, change the approach to meeting affordable housing goals by utilizing a dedicated funding stream to target individual households where policymakers want to promote a home- ownership opportunity. "Targeting those resources in a way that leads not just to more homeowners, but to more sustainable homeownership," DeMarco said. "It also means modernizing FHA, which needs to be an integral part of this discussion of affordable and sustainable homeownership." For Konyk, the major principles that must turn into action should be that, first, consumers are informed and then empowered to make their own choices, without a lender having to assume all the responsibility that the borrower may have made a bad choice. "at's an interesting concept because even in Dodd-Frank, this concept appeared to be clear because they actually created in the CFPB an office of financial education. So they got that, as a country, we've done a bad job of educating people in how to exist in the economy." Konyk continued, "What we need to do is to understand first, that it is a free economy, or at least we purport it to be. Borrowers should be empowered to make choices, and then lenders shouldn't be penalized for offering choices, as long as they offered them honestly, openly, and with the information necessary for an informed bor- rower to make a free choice. ose principles don't seem to be working in a lot of places right now." e role of the CFPB itself has been very much in question in recent months, after Presi- dent Trump appointed White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney as Acting Director of the organization. ere followed a legal dispute between Mulvaney and CFPB Deputy Director Leandra English, who was appointed to the same role by outgoing CFPB Director Richard Cordray. With both parties claiming they were the rightful inheritor of the position, the decision turned to the courts, which backed Mulvaney through several appeals and challenges. Mulvaney, a longtime critic of the agency, has set a very different course for the CFPB. He requested zero funding for the Bureau during Q2 2018 and in February announced a strategic plan for 2018-2022 that emphasized honor- ing the Bureau's statutory responsibilities but going "no further." In a statement at the time, Mulvaney explained that "pushing the envelope in pursuit of other objectives ignores the will of the American people" and "also risks trampling upon the liberties of our citizens." Unsurprisingly, this scaling back of the CFPB's regulatory focus has drawn ire from Sen. Warren, who was an advocate for the creation of the CFPB and a staunch defender of it ever since. She has butted heads with Mulvaney over the proper role of the CFPB, criticizing Mul- vaney for scaling back investigations into things such as payday lending practices. Warren has also been pushing back recently against the bipartisan Economic Growth, Reg- ulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, which would scale back some of the regulations put in place by Dodd-Frank after the financial crisis. One of the primary changes is increasing the threshold for enhanced regulatory stan- dards from $50 billion to $250 billion, a change designed to exempt some smaller and mid-sized banks from regulations that would still apply to the larger banking entities. e bill also exempts banks with less than $10 billion in assets from the Volcker Rule, which limits risky trading by U.S. banks, and dials back restrictions on small and regional banks when it comes to restrictions on mortgage lending. As the bill headed toward a final vote in the Senate, Warren warned that "If we lose the final vote next week, we'll be paving the way for the next big crash. It's time for the rest of us to fight back and demand that Washington work for us, not the big bank lobbyists." Overall, the industry needs to look at the weaknesses in certain things, but it isn't the same as saying, "Well, we've always done it this way, so this must be good." Instead it needs to say, "Look, this may be better. Here are the pitfalls. Here are the safeguards against them. And this is how we should be moving forward." Konyk strongly urges that despite the current active market, without taking action and fixing the problems now, the next downturn will come and cause panic again. "You don't want to fix them in a panic. e time to fix them is now." And the only way to do so is if policymakers from different parties, views, and perspectives can get to the table without the animosity. e housing system will only reach progress out of frank, open conversation and the understanding that each side has its reasons for its beliefs. "e way we get ahead in this country is we realize that we're not going to get everything we want," Konyk said. "But, we need to find the way to get the optimum solution, understanding that there's got to be compromises to move forward. We're not in that frame of mind right now in any of the pairings that you talk about. We just have to find a way to get by it."

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