What's With This?

I'm a few days late with this, but I don't see that anything has changed since these recent articles:

[Federal Housing Finance Agency head Ed DeMarco] has just rejected a request from the Treasury Department that he offer debt relief to troubled homeowners — a request backed by an offer by Treasury to pay up to 63 cents to the FHFA for every dollar of debt forgiven.

[…]

If the Secretary of the Treasury, acting on behalf of the president, believes that it is in the national interest to spend some taxpayer funds on debt relief, in a way that actually improves the FHFA’s budget position, the agency’s director has no business deciding on his own that he prefers not to act.

  Paul Krugman

Since his announcement, there has been an outpouring of understandable outrage at DeMarco for this nonsensical decision. But that outrage is misdirected. It’s time to move our ire away from one man blinded by ideology and political ambition, and put the blame where it belongs, on the president. It’s the president who has allowed DeMarco to hold on to the responsibilities he is so clearly unable to execute. And despite the Administration’s deflections, there is a clear path to removing DeMarco. What’s lacking is the conviction.

  The Hill

Yeah, so why is that?

When Congress took control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it established FHFA as the mortgage giants’ conservator and gave FHFA and its director a simple but serious mandate: preserve taxpayer assets and prevent foreclosures. On both basic counts, DeMarco has willfully failed to execute the basic duties he accepted when he was bureaucratically elevated to the position of acting director, and he should be removed for failure to do his job.

[…]

If the president is unwilling to fire Mr. DeMarco for just cause – of which there is ample evidence – he can still remove him. In the days since DeMarco’s announcement, news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, have cited the enacting statute for FHFA and opined that DeMarco can only be replaced by existing FHFA staff. But the statutory language lays out a process for a Senate-confirmed, permanent director. DeMarco is neither, and can be removed from this job and replaced without these restrictions.

[…]

On Thursday Housing Secretary Sean Donovan stated, “We believe, the president believes, that the decision that Ed DeMarco made is wrong.”

Apparently the president does not believe that.  DeMarco still has his job.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.