lenders

As bank-owned foreclosed properties pile up across the country, from abandoned houses in hard-hit neighborhoods to empty big box retail stores in failed strip malls, the fight over holding someone responsible for the brick and mortar mess left behind by the mortgage crisis continues to heat up.

People who refuse to make good on their credit card payments or other debts actually have a name — “ruthless defaulters” — and their numbers are likely to grow as more consumers find themselves overwhelmed by bills, according to David Streitfeld’s piece in The New York Times Sunday, which getting a lot of attention in [...]

When Congress passed the mortgage rescue bill in July, politicians touted help for homeowners as a big part of the legislation. By Oct. 1, the Federal Housing Admin. was to set up a program that would back, with $300 billion in guarantees, the refinanced loans of homeowners in trouble. Lenders who wanted to participate would [...]

With the mortgage crisis dragging on and no quick fix in sight, lots of new ideas to help people stay in their homes are floating around. Maybe one upside to the lack of action on stopping foreclosures is an opening for some innovation — for ways to break through the complications that seem to be [...]

Incredibly, Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain changed his surprise mortgage plan this week to make it even easier on lenders, Politico noted.
After introducing the idea in Tuesday’s debate, a summary of the proposal on McCain’s Website noted that lenders taking part must recognize the losses they’ve already suffered – which led people to believe [...]

That change in federal law to allow bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages in foreclosure isn’t going to make it into the $700-billion bailout bill, disappointing community and housing groups that pushed for it.
On Friday, Georgetown University credit expert Adam Levitin argued on TWI that the change would be the best way to help homeowners in [...]

The only way to guarantee help for those facing disclosure is to supplement the Wall Street bailout.

Remember when the subprime crisis first broke out last fall, and the Bush administration’s first response was to suggest that people read the fine print on their mortgages and take financial literacy courses?
It would not be such a bad idea for Wall Street to do the same now.

So far it looks like shareholders, employees and, of course, taxpayers are the big losers in the unprecedented Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac government bailout just announced over the weekend.
But some people are going to come out of this mess just fine, The New York Times says. And guess who that might be?
Departing chief executives [...]

Part 1: Programs like Bush-initiated Hope Now allow government and lending industry to show they are doing something while not doing much