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senior administration

Obama to back mortgage finance reform to speed housing recovery

President Barack Obama will propose overhauling the U.S. mortgage finance system in a speech on Tuesday, weighing in on a tangled and polarizing problem that was central to the devastating financial crisis in 2007-2009 and that continues to slow the economic recovery, the White House said. Obama will propose eliminating mortgage finance entities Fannie Mae […] Continue reading →

How Obama crossed his own line on Syria after months of debate

President Obama’s decision to arm Syrian rebels for the first time follows an intense, nearly two-year debate within the White House in which the president and his closest advisers consistently expressed skepticism about U.S. intervention in a Middle East civil war, current and former officials said. The two deciding factors in the decision to change […] Continue reading →

Obama administration backs Verizon data collection

The Obama administration on Thursday acknowledged that it is collecting a massive amount of telephone records from at least one carrier, reopening the debate over privacy even as it defended the practice as necessary to protect Americans against attack. The admission comes after the Guardian newspaper published a secret court order related to the records […] Continue reading →