The agencies that control mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac set out a roadmap for releasing the pair from government supervision, sending the entities’ common stock to the highest levels since 2019.

The new guidelines released Thursday reinstate the U.S. Treasury’s power to approve any such plan in a bid to keep the process “orderly.”

“The agreement restores Treasury’s previous right to consent to a release of the GSEs from conservatorship,” the Treasury Department and Federal Housing Finance Agency said in a joint statement. Fannie and Freddie are known as government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs.

It will “help ensure that the eventual release of the GSEs from conservatorship will be orderly and to reflect certain existing practices,” the agencies said.

The announcement, less than three weeks before Donald Trump is scheduled to be sworn back into office as president, comes just days after hedge fund manager Bill Ackman recommended buying the entities’ common stock, sending prices soaring.

U.S. fines JetBlue $2M for flight delays

The Transportation Department said Friday it will hit JetBlue Airways with a $2 million penalty for chronically late flights along the East Coast, and half the money will go to passengers who were delayed.

The agency said it’s the first time it has fined an airline for chronic delays on specific routes, which it blamed on “unrealistic scheduling” by JetBlue.

“Illegal chronic flight delays make flying unreliable for travelers. Today’s action puts the entire airline industry on notice that we expect their flight schedules to reflect reality,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said. His department has led the Biden administration in criticizing airlines for poor service and an increase in passenger fees.

JetBlue said the government, which operates the air traffic control system, shares the blame for late flights.

Airline spokesperson Derek Dombrowski said JetBlue has invested “tens of millions of dollars to reduce flight delays, particularly related to ongoing air traffic control challenges in our largest markets in the Northeast and Florida,” resulting in better on-time performance in 2024, including during the peak summer travel season.

Microsoft to spend $80B on AI centers

Microsoft plans to spend $80 billion this fiscal year building out data centers, underscoring the intense capital requirements of artificial intelligence.

More than half of this projected spending through June 2025 will be in the U.S., Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote in a blog post Friday. Recent AI progress is thanks to “large-scale infrastructure investments that serve as the essential foundation of AI innovation and use,” Smith wrote.

Cloud infrastructure providers like Microsoft and Amazon.com Inc. have been racing to expand computing capacity by constructing new data centers. In the previous fiscal year ending in June 2024, Microsoft spent more than $50 billion on capital expenditures, the vast majority related to server farm construction fueled by demand for artificial intelligence services.

Smith also cautioned the incoming Trump administration against “heavy-handed regulations” related to AI. “The most important US public-policy priority should be to ensure that the US private sector can continue to advance with the wind at its back,” Smith wrote.

Compiled from Bloomberg and Associated Press reports.