Us to implement housing market protection

Federal officials took two steps Tuesday to attempt to reduce the likelihood of a second financial crisis caused in large part by large declines in the housing market.

The first would try to tackle the problem of foreclosures. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees the massive mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, said it would consider a new approach to how home loans are managed by banks. Critics say the current system makes it more lucrative for a bank to foreclose than to find ways to modify loans to allow struggling borrowers to stay in their homes.

The second would try to curtail reckless mortgage lending by more tightly regulating what firms can do with the loans they make. Currently, banks can pool mortgage loans together into an investment and sell that to investors around the globe, passing on all the risk associated with the loans. But a report released by the Treasury Department, as required by the Dodd-Frank law overhauling financial regulation, endorsed the law's prescription that banks be forced to hold on to a portion of the investment, making it difficult for a bank to ignore the risks associated with lending.

Recognizing that private firms and government programs have had difficulty carrying out a large number of modifications to mortgages to avoid foreclosures, the FHFA said it would consider several approaches to how banks should manage home loans. Studies have shown that foreclosure is often more profitable for a company, known as a mortgage servicer, that collects the monthly payments on mortgages and passes them on to investors who own the mortgages.