The Home Affordable Modification Program — designed to reduce homeowners’ monthly mortgage payments and to keep them in their homes — has been an abysmal failure. Back in January, my colleague Mary Kane reported that the program showed signs of falling far short of its goals. It has continued More…
This morning, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Neil Barofsky, released his latest quarterly report on the state of the Obama administration’s signature effort to calm the financial markets — from banking to credit to housing. In it, he lambastes the Home Affordable More…
Today, Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or SIGTARP — in layman’s terms, the government’s watchdog over the program to stabilize the banking sector and housing market — released a quarterly report on how things are going. TARP programs did well to stabilize More…
Today, the Department of Housing and Urban Development released a new monthly scorecard on the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP — the Obama administration’s signature effort to keep underwater and distressed homeowners in their homes.
The report is, well, not great. And the accompanying press release is More…
The Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform bill — passed out of Congress yesterday and headed for President Obama’s desk next week — runs for 2,300 pages, directs regulators to create more than 500 new rules and orders 68 studies. It is a complicated piece of work. As such, there are More…
Today, Edward Pinto, Fannie Mae’s chief credit officer from 1987 to 1989 and a prominent housing consultant, testified before the House Oversight Committee on the question of whether loan servicers are doing enough to prevent foreclosure and preserve homeownership. His bottom line: The Treasury Department’s Home Affordable Modification Program, More…
Sandra Monroe-Olcott of the Montclare neighborhood of Chicago is in the same position as hundreds of thousands of Americans. She lost her job on April 1, 2008. She applied for unemployment insurance — $804 every two weeks — and immediately started searching for another position. Her husband, now 74, had More…
Today, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Treasury Department unveiled a new monthly scorecard on the administration’s efforts to stabilize the national housing market, taking the place of the old monthly More…
Today, Freddie Mac — the government-sponsored enterprise that buys mortgages on the secondary market, and is currently under a Federal Housing Finance Agency conservatorship — reported losses of $6.7 billion in the first quarter.
It isn’t quite as bad as it sounds, but it is bad, and a sign More…
Blogging at Naked Capitalism, Edward Harrison provides a persuasive argument for why retail sales and consumption are increasing, despite persistent joblessness and a lack of income growth. He posits that homeowners in foreclosure or struggling with mortgage payments are deciding to stop sending checks to the bank, letting their More…
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