Reports: Expect Obama’s Housing Finance Plan Soon

A declaration by ""President Barack Obama"":http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/president-obama to end the war in Iraq helped drown other news Friday, including apparent moves by the White House to float a housing finance stimulus plan in the next few weeks.

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""_Reuters_"":http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/20/usa-congress-bernanke-idUSN1E79J1RA20111020 broke the story Thursday, reporting that ""Sen. Dianne Feinstein"":http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/ (D-California) may have inadvertently shared plans by the Obama administration and ""Federal Housing Finance Agency"":http://www.fhfa.gov/ (FHFA) to reveal ""legislative recommendations"" to revamp the housing finance system.

The lawmaker and news service spared any details regarding the housing finance proposal, leaving it open to a number of policy considerations currently on the table.

Some of the initiatives currently under wraps include an expansion of the Home Affordable Refinance Program and a selloff in mortgage-backed bonds by ""Fannie Mae"":http://www.fanniemae.com/portal/index.html and ""Freddie Mac"":http://www.freddiemac.com/ to invite private-sector investment back into the housing finance system.

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""_The Wall Street Journal_"":http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204774604576629313337793024.html reported on the latter in a story last week, offering that policymakers may want to inaugurate a ""small pilot program"" for the GSEs to sell their mortgage-backed bonds sometime next year.

Stefanie Johnson, a spokesperson for the FHFA, declined to comment on either of the possibilities for the story.

_Reuters_ reported that Senate Democrats had met with ""Federal Reserve"":http://www.federalreserve.gov/ ""Chairman Ben Bernanke"":http://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/bios/board/bernanke.htm to address his concerns about the laggardly housing sector.

The news service quoted ""Sen. Mark Warner"":http://warner.senate.gov/public/ (R-Virginia) saying that the central banker fielded ideas about how to move the refinance proposal ""down the road.""

Speaking with _MReport_ in past interviews, ""Mark Calabria"":http://www.cato.org/people/mark-calabria, director of financial regulation studies with the ""Cato Institute"":http://www.cato.org/ and a former Senate Banking Committee staffer, said that DeMarco sees as his primary responsibility the need to shore up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the sake of their solvency.

He also said that DeMarco isn't the only potential stumbling block for these initiatives, with stakes belonging to a number of officials and others with the GSEs.

""This may not have more than a $36-billion impact on the housing industry, and that's just a drop in the bucket in terms of turning the economy around,"" says David Lykken, managing partner with Austin-based consultancy ""Mortgage Banking Solutions"":http://www.mortgagebankingsolutions.com/about-mbsd/about-us.html and an industry veteran.

""Anything you can dump into the economy will help, but then you do the math on it, so it won't have the lift it's going to have,"" he adds.