Martha Coakley may have been early to the party in announcing her disdain for the man last month, but it looks like she’s got company in wanting Federal housing chief Ed DeMarco to hit the tracks.
Several state attorneys general are pushing for DeMarco’s outster, and a coalition of housing advocates is on their side, saying that DeMarco’s unwillingess to allow principle reduction modifications is the main obstacle holding back a housing recovery.
Whether or not the mods make sense, winkling DeMarco out of his shell won’t be an easy task. He’s always said that he viewed job #1 as getting Fannie and Freddie back in the black, and with the two mortgage giants’ 2012 results coming in this month, they finally are. And then some: Freddie made a $20 billion profit last year, and Fannie made so much bank she needed an extension to count the piles. No wonder many in the mortgage industry are about ready to nominate DeMarco for sainthood.
With the housing recovery seemingly back on track, the arguments that DeMarco’s holding it back don’t quite carry the weight they may have during the desperate stretches of 2010 and 2011. And even if housing advocates could get DeMarco out, it’s not at all clear that they could get anybody they’d like better in: An attempt by the Obama adminsitration to nominate a replacement died in the Senate in 2010….as have pretty much all the Obama administration’s attempts to nominate anybody, for anything, for years now.
Based on his testimony today, the attention in Washington — especially on the Republican side — seems to be shifting to how to replace Fannie and Freddie altogether. It may be that advocates for distressed homeowners have waited too late to start their crusade.
