Word: maes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Mae Weston...
There is a personality clash between the liberal, Humphrey-style Democrat Pat Harris and Oakley Hunter, a former Republican Congressman from Southern California. Their deeper problems center on policy: Should Fannie Mae retain its semi-independence, as Hunter wants, or should it bow to HUD directives, as Harris insists? Specifically, Harris feels that Fannie Mae is far too concerned about making money-last year its profits rose from $127 million to $165 million-and too unconcerned with stimulating mortgage lending for low-income housing in the cities...
...first 26 years, Fannie Mae was a Government agency. In 1968 Congress turned it into a private, profit-oriented company answerable primarily to its stockholders, both individuals and institutions. But the President was given the right to fire its directors "for cause," and HUD was granted some powers to limit Fannie Mae's borrowing. It raises billions of dollars a year in private markets and then buys mortgages from banks, savings and loan associations and other lenders, giving them money to invest in other mortgages. Currently, Fannie Mae holds about $34 billion worth of housing debt...
Hunter, who earns $140,000 a year, also faces opposition within Fannie Mae's board; of its 15 directors, five are appointed by the President and ten are voted in by stockholders after being nominated by a management committee. Last October, one stockholder-chosen director, Julian Zimmerman, a mortgage banker who was head of the Federal Housing Administration under President Eisenhower, called for Hunter's resignation on the grounds that Fannie Mae's management had grown aloof and unresponsive to both its own board and the Government. In November a motion to censure Hunter barely lost...
...nominated for re-election at a board meeting scheduled for this Tuesday. So the White House dispatched Strauss to settle the fight and get Hunter's terms for resigning. Meeting with Strauss last week, Hunter talked about quitting in the future, provided that the Administration would guarantee Fannie Mae's "fiscal integrity and independence." Hunter also wanted all of HUD'S authority over Fannie Mae transferred to the Treasury. But Pat Harris rejected any such deal, and so the White House remains in the middle of an ongoing fight...