From the Wall Street Journal:

In key concessions to the banking industry, Mr. Conyers agreed to alter the legislation to allow court-ordered modifications only for existing mortgages and to require that borrowers contact their lender at least 15 days before filing bankruptcy. Citigroup Inc. had demanded the changes in exchange for throwing its weight behind the bill, a move that angered the rest of the industry.

In another change, the legislation will now require recipients of cram downs who resell their home within five years to share the proceeds with their lender.

The panel also added language dissuading bankruptcy judges from shrinking the principal amounts of mortgages guaranteed by the Federal Housing Administration, the Veterans Administration or the Department of Agriculture. Under current law, the government cannot guarantee or insure amounts that have been crammed down on such loans.

The financial blog Calculated Risk cites a passage from the late-contributor Tanta to argue that limiting the bankruptcy avenue to existing loans might mitigate the law’s effectiveness: From Tanta’s post:

I’m in favor of it [cramdown] because I think it will be part of a range of regulatory and legal changes that will help prevent future borrowers from getting into a lot of jams, which is to say that it will … actually help “stabilize” the residential mortgage market in the long term. Any industry that wants special treatment under the law because of the socially vital nature of its services needs to offer socially viable services, and since the industry has displayed no ability or willingness to quit partying on its own, then treat it like any other partier under BK law.

Even after taking hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, it seems the banks still hold considerable sway over Congress.

Tanta also often taught the mainstream media a lesson, calling out reporters for doing lazy or misleading stories. And the fact that she could delve so deeply into a complicated subject and still attract a large audience probably was the biggest lesson of all, especially for newspapers laying off experienced reporters and pushing for shorter stories.

From Calculated Risk’s tribute:

Tanta liked to ferret out the details. She was inquisitive and had a passion for getting the story right. Sometimes she wouldn’t post for a few days, not because she wasn’t feeling well, but because she was reading through volumes of court rulings, or industry data, to get the facts correct. She respected her readers, and people noticed.

Here’s how the New York Times described her influence:

Thanks in large part to Tanta’s contributions, Calculated Risk became a crucial source of prescient analysis as the housing market at first faltered, then collapsed and finally spawned a full-blown credit crisis.

Tanta used her extensive knowledge of the loan industry to comment, castigate and above all instruct. Her fans ranged from the Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times who cited her in his blog, to analysts at the Federal Reserve, who cited her in a paper on “Understanding the Securitization of Subprime Mortgage Credit.”

Tanta’s real name was Doris Dungey, and she most recently lived in Upper Marlboro, Md. Most regular readers never even knew any of that. In the blogosphere she was just Tanta, and everyone who cared about the mortgage meltdown knew her name.