"A U.S. housing regulator is considering limiting one of the most powerful tools federal attorneys have to punish banks for making mistakes in mortgage lending, a move the Federal Housing Administration hopes will encourage banks to give more home loans to worthy but weaker borrowers, according to people familiar with the matter.Since the mortgage crisis, the government has extracted billions of dollars in penalties from lenders that made mistakes on loans to borrowers who later defaulted. The errors ranged from small mistakes to ones that affected the riskiness of the mortgages." Full article »