Experts from the US, Europe, Canada, and Asia will address efforts to moderate housing cycles using countercyclical lending policies.

Experts from the US, Europe, and Canada will address efforts and proposals to moderate housing cycles by using countercyclical lending policies.

We, at last, have two bills in Congress – one in the House and one in the Senate – addressing the long-festering problem of what to do with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and proposing a housing finance sector without them.

Although there seems to be a near-consensus that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be eliminated, there is no consensus on what should replace them. History should tell all of us that the PATH bill is the way to go.

Earlier this month, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), along with subcommittee chairs Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Randy Neugebauer (R-TX), and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), unveiled the Protecting American Taxpayers and Homeowners (PATH) Act of 2013. Title II encompasses the most significant and common-sense FHA reform legislation in memory.

Taxpayers received $66 billion of good news last Monday in the form of dividends to the Treasury from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as part of the compensation for the bailout of the two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). The bad news is that these payments reflect the fact that the two...

What should be done with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is the biggest question of the $10 trillion, post-crisis American housing finance sector.

It would be easy to love Corker-Warner, a bill that gets rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—unless it fosters the same loose lending that led to the housing debacle. By keeping the government in charge, this bill does just that.

The Corker-Warner bill intends that the government guarantee is only there to cover "catastrophic" situations and losses. But what if, as it doubtless does in every case, the guarantee makes the catastrophe more likely?