Herbert Monroe Allison, Jr. was an American businessman who oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability from 2009 to 2010. His previous positions included president and CEO of Fannie Mae, a post to which he was appointed in September 2008, after Fannie was placed into conservatorship. Prior to that, Allison was chairman, president and chief executive officer of TIAA from 2002 until his retirement in 2008.

The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), commonly known as Fannie Mae, is a United States government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) and, since 1968, a publicly traded company. Founded in 1938 during the Great Depression as part of the New Deal, the corporation's purpose is to expand the secondary mortgage market by securitizing mortgage loans in the form of mortgage-backed securities (MBS), allowing lenders to reinvest their assets into more lending and in effect increasing the number of lenders in the mortgage market by reducing the reliance on locally based savings and loan associations. Its brother organization is the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), better known as Freddie Mac.