Fannie Refused to Punish Countrywide for Bad Debt, Lockhart Says

``James Lockhart, who led the Federal Housing Finance Agency until 2009 and its predecessor, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, "spent a lot of time" pushing Fannie Mae executives to seek more so-called putbacks on Countrywide loans that failed to match their promised quality, he said today. "They didn't want to offend their largest customer," Lockhart, now the vice chairman at investment firm WL Ross & Co., said during a speech at a Mortgage Bankers Association conference in New York.''