FDIC Chairman Says GSE Overhaul Should Top Agenda After Financial Bill

Bloomberg reports:

An overhaul of the U.S. mortgage- finance system “should rise to the top of the agenda” as soon as Congress finishes its rewrite of financial-industry rules, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said today.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage firms 80 percent owned by the federal government, should be reshaped as part of a broader effort to make the nation’s housing policy “more definitive about where the financial obligation of taxpayers begins and ends,” Bair said in prepared remarks at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in Philadelphia.