The White House on the Foreclosure Crisis

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BOB SHIEFFER: Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse now we find that this sloppy paperwork by the lenders may have made some of these foreclosures now that are being contemplated invalid. Some of the biggest lenders are now freezing foreclosures until they can get all this straightened out. I guess the first question I would have is does the administration favor some kind of national moratorium on these foreclosures to get this all sorted out?

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DAVID AXELROD: First of all, Bob, it is a serious problem. It’s thrown a lot of uncertainty into the housing market that is, you know is already fragile. And it’s — and it’s bad for the housing market and it’s bad for these institutions which is why they’re scrambling –

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BOB SCHIEFFER: Hm.

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DAVID AXELROD: –now to– to go back through and– and– and through their documentation for all of this as they should. The President was concerned enough to veto a bill that came to him last Thursday, that would have unintentionally made it perhaps easier to make mistakes. And, so we are concerned. We’re working with these institutions. I’m not sure about a national moratorium because there are, in fact, valid foreclosures that — that– that probably should go forward. And where the documentation and paperwork is — is proper, but we are working closely with these institutions to make sure that they expedite the process of going back and reconstructing these and throwing out those that don’t work.

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BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, I mean, I guess people are worried about what do you think the impact this is going to have on an economy that’s pretty shaky right now anyway?

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DAVID AXELROD: Well, look, our hope is that this moves rapidly and that this gets unwound very, very quickly and that they — they — they can go back reconstruct their paperwork and what we’ve stressed to them is that they need to expedite that process and work very, very quickly to get it done. And we’re going to continue to — to push for them.