House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) called for the abolition of the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) during a committee hearing Friday. “As I believe this committee will be recommending, abolishing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in their present form and coming up with a new whole system of housing?finance,” Frank said, according to multiple media reports. Frank’s office did not immediately respond to HousingWire’s request for comment. The statement comes at a time when the future of the GSEs is regularly debated. The federal government has invested more than $100bn into the two companies since putting them into conservatorship in Sept. 2008. Some have called for the re-privatization of the companies, while others have argued nationalizing the GSEs would quicken the recovery of the nation’s housing market. Frank isn’t the first to call for the end of Fannie and Freddie. Analysts at Moody’s Investors Service projected the federal government would wind down the GSEs last summer. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) also called for a sweeping overhaul of the GSE secondary mortgage market and a new governmental role in the securitization of mortgage loans last summer. Write to Austin Kilgore.