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New documents obtained by ProPublica through the Freedom of Information Act provide new insights into what a complete disaster the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) has been. HAMP was created with $50 billion from TARP funds and was supposed to facilitate mortgage modifications by reducing monthly payments for potentially millions of stressed homeowners. But the Treasury apparently had little or no real oversight of the program that was rife with problems.
I strongly recommend people read the entire ProPublica article, but here’s an example:
Documents obtained by ProPublica — government audit reports of GMAC, the country’s fifth-largest mortgage servicer — provide the first detailed look at the program’s oversight. They show that the company operated with almost no oversight for the program’s first eight months. When auditors did finally conduct a major review more than a year into the program, they found that GMAC had seriously mishandled many loan modifications — miscalculating homeowner income in more than 80 percent of audited cases, for example. Yet, GMAC suffered no penalty. GMAC itself said it hasn’t reversed a single foreclosure as a result of a government audit.
The documents also reveal that government auditors signed off on GMAC loan-modification denials that appear to violate the program’s own rules, calling into question the rigor and competence of the reviews.
The fact the program suffered from very poor oversight shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has been following David Dayen’s Portrait of HAMP Failure series, but the documents provide new insight into how poorly Treasury carried out the program.
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Thanks for getting this news out here, Jon. No, no surprise. Actually, no oversight, either.
It’s important to know the specifics nonetheless.
You’re a good man, Jon! Thanks.
Senator Mary McCurnin went through two years of bankbullshit on HAMP mod tp keep their home only to be foreclosed on. Obama should be wearing this but MSM gives him a free ride to loot.
The TBTF banksters were unwilling players in the program. They had a private suite at the Whitehouse.
No oversight because Treasury wasn’t interested in overseeing. Period.
Treasury is run by Geithner. He is the point man for Wall Street in the White House. He flat out refused to act on Obama’s wishes that Citigroup be dissolved in early 2009. Obama chose the wrong economic team, at the behest of Robert Rubin, and by the time Volcker and Romer came on board, Obama had been turned into a puppet controlled by Rubin, Summers, Geithner and Bernanke. Much has been said about Wall Street holding Obama hostage, threatening to tank the stock market if they don’t get their way. Geithner is the actual hostage taker, that’s why he’s still there and the others have left. Geithner makes all of the economic decisions of this administration. He works for Wall Street and will be rewarded with a massive compensation package in 2013. Obama is a law professor who got in way over his head after making some great speeches.
Might be right; wouldn’t surprise me. Certainly someone other than Obama is calling the shots. And it ain’t in the best interests of the “average” citizens, that’s for sure.
Sadly, you offer one of the only reasonable explanations. What I’d like to know is, what kind of dance were they doing when they announced that Geithner would be leaving by the end of the year and then took it back. Until he’s gone, I have no hope at all about anything in our government. What an utter failure!
Well I am SHOCKED to read this. A government program poorly managed with no oversight? Surely a rare occurrence.
Yup, that’s the long and the short of it. Suskind’s book is fairly awesome with all the depressing details. Perhaps Norman Bates was right that a boy’s best friend is his mother, but its a pity that the President is less clear-eyed about Tim Geithner’s abilities than Mrs. Geithner.
He told them he’d just heard from his mother. “She said, ‘Tim, remember the summer you worked at that bar and the owner said you weren’t exactly the best bartender? Well, maybe this is like that, and this job just isn’t for you.’” He shook his head. “My own mother!”
First…Gmac is rarely mentioned when they list the “bad” banks. Because my lender is gmac and has literally made up my balances, has refused my lawyers requests for a history of my payments, has charged me to process my paper checks electronically, charged bogus fees my lawyers couldn’t explain, kept fees that the judge told them to remove…and continue with these illegal practices…you cannot imagine the stress, of thinking that a refinance might bring justice, only to find them continuing to behave illegally. Tax payers saved them…but they are never mentioned until they get caught. Tenor a short while they will be listed…they have a million different names to confuse the issue. It’s so frustrating to know that they really don’t want you to refinance. What they want to do is continue heaping on the fees, put you into foreclosure and hold that property on their books. This helps to hide the real balances, the real truth about about these banks! I want to see an all out investigation of gmac. I want the truth.
Everyone that I know that tried HAMP, their credit score got lowered. I am going to have to face that I’ll get no cram-down or any adjustment. I can afford my mortgage, but, to work I’ll have to drive a LONG commute. No lifestyle.
GMAC denied my request for a modification under HAMP a year ago- they basically said, “You can’t afford a reduced payment, so you can go on paying $2600 a month until you run out of money.” (Shorter GMAC: “Fuck you, we make more money off foreclosing.”) Since then I’ve been paying the original payment EVERY GODDAMN MONTH, until this September, when one of my lodgers couldn’t pay the full rent on time. So I’ve defaulted.
Conveniently I had already ruined my credit score by filing for bankruptcy last year. And had I been able to file Chapter 13 (where you still have enough money to pay part of your debt), I could have wiped out my entire second mortgage, but because I am now poor, I had to file Chapter 7 instead, thus leaving the second mortgage completely intact. (Defaulted on that in July.)
The game is rigged. Do you know if you manage to sell your house in a short sale you will be forced to sign a piece of paper that says you can never own this piece of property again? So even if you miraculously won the lottery six months after the sale you could not buy your house back.
Fuck them and the horse they rode in on. No wait, that would be unfair to the horse.