fhfa -- market. fhfa works to balance these across all activity. because fannie mae and freddie mac are in conservatorship, we are mandated by the statutes to preserve and conserve their assets. earlier this month, fhfa issued a new scorecard that outlined our conservatorship expectations for the enterprises in 2015. the conservatorship strategic plan that we issued in 2014 and the scorecards we issued in 2014 and 2015 are centered around three strategic goals that are fully aligned with the statutory mandate. the first goal is to maintain the credit availability and foreclosure invention activities supported by the enterprises and to do so in a safe and sound way. during 2014, in support of this goal fhfa made considerable progress with the enterprises to clarify their representation and more anti-framework -- and warranty framework and to enhance the enterprise's outreach to small and rural lenders. in 2015, the enterprises will continue their work on these and other priorities, such as analyzing the potential benefits and feasibility of using up

>> the risk retention rule was not done by fhfa. that was -- that was a combined -- that was a joint rule-making process. so i'm not sure that we're looking at anything that is going to -- >> but the fact that it failed to exempt freddie mac's securities even though it exempted fannie's they should be treated the same. that's a -- >> i would hope that whatever rule comes out would treat both fannie and freddie securities the same. that's what we're trying to work our way towards under -- in the single security. >> thank you. my time has expired. thank you. >> the time of the gentle lady expired. the chair recognizes the gentleman from north carolina, mr. mchenry, vice chairman of the committee. >> director watt, thank you. good to see you again. and always good to see on the plane coming back and forth from your former district in charlotte. >> congratulations on that beautiful baby. >> thank you. thank you, mel. i appreciate it. i appreciate your kindness and friendship over the years. we have been able to have conversations even w

the fhfa has joined sort of a moral hazard problem here. and in december you announced the gses should begin to put more money into the coffers of housing advocacy groups through the housing trust fund established under the housing and economic recovery act. and you made this move despite the fact that fannie and freddie have yet to repay a lot of the money due to the american people. we can argue about whether it's 200 billion, but it was a lot of money lost at the end of the day because of overleveraged. so it is difficult to see how you can argue that as it is required by law, the gses are financially stable enough to begin the transfer of money to housing groups. let me show you the ratios here, and i think this was pointed out earlier. fannie mae leveraged at 340101. now, that's capital ratio point to 9%. freddie mac 153 to one. and equally concerned leverage ratio of .65%. the rumor a decade ago i was arguing about 100 to one leverage ratios. this is excessive of that. you said earlier the leverage ratio is not something the statute r

when i got the fhfa, i kind of took fhfa out of that discussion because we were sending mixed messages. it wasn't part of the statutory mission that fhfa has, which is to in the present guarantee liquidity and safety and soundness in the market. that is a congressional decision, not an fhfa -- >> i respect your answer, but i want to commend you because since fhfa's conservatorship of fannie mae and freddie mac, we have seen a stark change in the finances of gses for the better and thank you for your leadership and being able to make those improvements i especially like the $38 billion in extra funds that you gave our nation's treasury. i have another question, late last year, fannie mae and freddie mac announced new lending guidelines designed to help more low income and first-time buyers afford homes, including a reduction of the minimum down payment from 5% to 3%. what other proposals is fhfa looking to encourage first-time home buyers and how is the agency making people aware of these initiatives i have mentioned? >> well, we have a number of things that already on the books. i don'

fhfa orders gses to start supporting affordable housing trust fund. surprisingly the year here is not 2005, it's 2015. and so we find the fha today engaged in this race with fannie and freddie to see who can more swiftly crowd out the private sector, who can assume more risk on behalf of the american taxpayer. and i would just point out that in my view this is kind of a frightening race. we've seen it before. the fha has joined sort of a moral hazard problem here, and in december, you announced that the gses should begin to put more money into the coffers of advocacy groups through the housing trust fund established under the housing and economic recovery act and you made this move despite the fact that fannie and freddie have yet to repay a lot of the money through the american people. we can argue about whether it's 200 billion or -- but there was a lot of money lost at the end of the day because of overleverage. so it is difficult to see how you can argue that as it is required by law, the gses are financially stable enough to begin the transfer of

. >> well you -- >> every opinion i express now is an fhfa opinion. so i try not to express those personal opinions. >> well, i appreciate that very much mr. watt. but with all due respect you're in a position of a great authority. you're the regulators for the gses, and i would like to beg to differ with you a little bit that your opinion is greatly appreciated. and what i'm trying to get across if i may is that we have two very large institutions that do not abide by the same capital requirements as other nongovernment institutions around country. i might also add, if i may, that if you're looking at fannie mae with $3.3 trillion in assets -- and this has been said here before -- they have roughly $10 billion in assets, but they're asking the taxpayers to backstop $3.3 trillion in loans. now, if you're looking at freddie mac, excuse me, you're looking at freddy mack, they have about 13 billion in assets and a backstop of $2.2 trillion. so i think we could both agree, i hope so that these are organizations that are grossly undercapitalized and repres

and that's why the administration as well as fhfa have taken a number of steps to ease those standards. and i think we'll start -- we've seen some of the easing. i think we'll see further easing as a result of, for example clarifying the circumstances under which guarantees apply in a so-called putback risk harmonizing qm and qrm and a number of other steps that we've taken to increase the -- [inaudible] >> let me ask you one oh -- other. sort of on the bullish side mark zandi of moody's is arguing that we're on our way back to full employment by mid 2016. and i was wondering whether that's an assumption or that's a forecast you would agree with. it would, obviously, be great news for democrats to be in a full employment situation in 2016. what's your sense? >> yeah. i mean, first of all i'd note that to date the unemployment rate has fallen much further, much faster than anyone predicted. be you look at the fore -- if you look at the forecasts as recently as 2013 they said it would take us until 2017 or later to get to where we already are today with an unemployment rate below 6%. and