If you read this blog regularly (and the traffic numbers suggest that you don’t), you’ll know that I have become a fan of Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP). In essence, he is the guy who oversees TARP and periodically publishes a report to Congress on the successes or failures of the program. I have come to like his blunt, plain language reports on TARP. Barofsky showed himself unafraid to criticize the government or its programs. Unfortunately, he is resigning in March.
While generally positive on the impact of TARP, Barofsky cited the failures of the government’s flagship foreclosure prevention program, the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) in his resignation, saying that those borrowers it was designed to save are “in a far worse place than they would have been had this program not existed.” He added:“it is absolutely heartbreaking the number of families that are not being reached by this program.”
This is not the first time that Barofsky has been critical of HAMP. Back in January, he described the program as a “failure“, saying that regulators “are afraid to rein in or impose penalties on the mortgage servicers” and that these servicers’ track records are “nothing short of abysmal“. He went further, saying:
“The most specific of TARP’s Main Street goals, “preserving homeownership,” has so far fallen woefully short, with TARP’s portion of the Administration’s mortgage modification program yielding only 207,000 (out of a total of 467,000) ongoing permanent modifications since TARP’s inception, a number that stands in stark contrast to the 5.5 million homes receiving foreclosure filings and more than 1.7 million homes that have been lost to foreclosure since January 2009.”
There’s not a lot more to say about this story. I hope the next SIGTARP is as committed to his/her role of overseer as Barofsky was.
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Shannon
February 21, 2011 @ 8:30 pm
Amen! We would have been so much better out without this Obama HAMP program, as it has done nothing but give people false hope and destroyed so many lives!!! I’ve seen it all as I was a former loan modification processor over the course of the last 3 yrs. for one of those “BAD” loan modification companies you keep hearing about in the news (not to say that bad ones aren’t out there). Funny how our government will be so quick to bash those “bad” loan modification companies when all we were guilty of doing was fighting tooth & nail to help people stay in their homes (and I can only speak for myself and my fellow hard-working processors who worked tirelessly with me). Finally…2 years later…2 years way toooooooo late, our corrupted, colluded officials will finally acknowledge who the real cons are – the mortgage loan servicers!!!
Or…Is it really the servicers who are the con artists here? They are just doing what they are in the business of doing: making money & turning a profit, and at the expense of an astonishing ever-increasing number of families’ lives and their homes. Loan servicers actually make money in most cases by initiating foreclosure than by modifying-even with their laughable, mediocre “incentive” that the government promises to give them to modify a loan. Mr. Obama, his team, and all the special interests involved (ie: the very banks that are screwing homeowners left & right) have failed us miserably and are still failing us miserably.
Of course, our elected officials have no choice but to acknowledge this enormous scandalous problem now… now that they have allowed the problem to fester & escalate to such a dire, indisputable crisis. There is no way that they can continue to turn a blind eye and expect to retain all the votes that got them in office in the first place. CORRUPTION!!! IT’S ALL CORRUPTION!!! The US government on a whole does not care about us hard-working American citizens anymore. All they care about is what their next con will be: What they are going to say and do to market themselves for the next voting season, all in an effort to uphold in their position of power. They only “care” when it is expedient to their own personal benefit; Never for the benefit of The American People, no matter how smooth they talk or how caring and concerned they want you to believe they are. So many people lost their homes that shouldn’t have, according to the Obama Administration & The US Treasury’s very own HAMP guidelines that they miserably failed to enforce, and are still failing us Americans miserably-to this very day. Their letdown of leadership on this devastation is certainly not because “they didn’t know” that the loan servicers weren’t doing their job. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that when you tell a loan servicer that a program is “voluntary”, you’ve got serious problems. And Mr. Obama had the careless audacity to face all of those extremely desperate for hope, anxious homeowners to announce his genius program, giving so many hopeless Americans a false sense of hope, but leaving most of them worse off than before. And he announced his great HAMP program with such grace and so empathic-sounding too, but knowing full and well that this is nothing short of a hoax to show you that he really cares. So, who is the real con-artists here…really?
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