Treasury Admits It Hasn't Fined Banks For Failing To Comply With Mortgage Modification Program

[WillyT]

Treasury Admits It Hasn't Fined Banks For Failing To Comply With Mortgage Modification Program (VIDEO)
William Alden - HuffingtonPost
First Posted: 11-18-10 03:54 PM | Updated: 11-18-10 04:03 PM]

<snip>

A top Treasury department official said Thursday that the government has still not imposed any fines on banks that do not comply with the Obama administration's mortgage modification program.

In testimony before a House Financial Services subcommittee, Phyllis Caldwell, chief of Treasury's Homeownership Preservation Office, said her department has pursued "non-monetary remedies" but has not actually imposed any fines on banks for not complying with the administration's flagship $50 billion foreclosure prevention program.

Even in the midst of a growing controversy over allegedly fraudulent foreclosure paperwork, Treasury has not imposed any penalties on banks.

By many estimates, the Home Affordable Modification Program, which was launched last year, has been a failure. Although about 1.5 million borrowers were encouraged to sign up during its first year, 40 percent of those were kicked out of the program after initiating "trial" modifications, HuffPost's Shahien Nasiripour and Arthur Delaney reported. The program was intended to help up to 4 million homeowners avoid foreclosure.

In his latest report to Congress, the special inspector general for TARP Neil Barofsky said the mortgage-modification program can actually cause borrowers to go into foreclosure, due to extra fees that can accumulate on modified loans. The Government Accountability Office reported in March and in June not only that Treasury has not levied any fines on mortgage companies, but also that it hasn't even finalized guidelines for doing so.

<snip>

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/18/mortgage-modification_n_785581.html

:wtf:

[polichick]

1. My God, the government is loaded with incompetent and/or corrupt idiots! nt

[WillyT]

2. Yeah... And It's Hard Trying To Figure Out What "Side" They're On

Are they acting, or NOT acting, on their own, or are orders coming down from on high... and who would THAT be???

:shrug:

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. Remember,the Treasury Sec. is a guy who claimed he did not know how to work Turbo Tax.

Imagine trying something complicated in real life.
:sarcasm:

[truedelphi]

4. Charlie Rangel being hit over the head with brick a bats vis a vis

Thirteen complaints.

None of them sounded that serious. Most are minor offenses - he's offered a campaign suite that horror of horrors, allowed for business to be conducted in an area of a New York High Rise where only residential activities were allowed.

Meanwhile, Geithner resides at the US Treasury (Well actually he resides, most work days, down the hall from the Oval Office.)

Geithner is a known tax offender. If you or I failed to file a few years in a row, we would owe more in penalties than we'd ever make in our lifetimes.

He would have been tried for violating RICO provisions when he worked as the Head of the New York Federal Reserve, and merrily and immorally played Footsie with Goldman Sachs in terms of deciding who and what would fail on Wall Street, except that apparently when you head the new York Fed, you don't have to worry about RICO violations.

Then when you look at all the immoral behavior that Wall Street got the Congressional Suits to declare as legal, such that although Fifty Billion bucks was offered to the banks as monies to help for troubled households to sweeten up the banks so they'd allow for Mortgage Refinancing,
yet only 1.5% of that money ever ended up helping the actual home owners. So you end up using you remaining strength to shout:

ARE YOU FRIGGIN" KIDDING ME?

Like Vonnegut used to say:

And so it goes...

[sakabatou]

5. *facepalm*