No Wonder Andrew Cuomo Is Purging Emails

Pro Publica and the Times Union report:

Previously undisclosed emails sent by a mortgage industry lobbyist doubling as a consultant for then-Attorney General Andrew Cuomo show the lobbyist played a self-described "critical role" in one of Cuomo's signature financial investigations.

The emails from 2007 and 2008 detail how the lobbyist, longtime Cuomo confidant Howard Glaser, was involved in an investigation of mortgage industry players that included Glaser's own clients.

In one email, Glaser touted his influence over a Cuomo deal that weakened rules to prevent misdeeds in the mortgage market. That deal, with mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, reflected Glaser's "significant, critical and current input," he wrote in an email, "a fact to which current (Fannie and Freddie) employees and the NYAG's office are prepared to attest." Fannie and Freddie were both Glaser's clients.

The emails contradict Glaser's previous account of his involvement in Cuomo's investigations.

ProPublica and the Times Union reported last year that Glaser had worked simultaneously as a consultant for the attorney general's office and for a bevy of mortgage industry firms. Glaser said at the time that he only gave general advice to Cuomo's office, that he did not represent clients with the attorney general, and that he was "not involved" in specific mortgage industry cases.

The emails, however, suggest Glaser was involved in mortgage industry cases, and traveled to Cuomo's office repeatedly over the course of nearly two years while the investigations related to Glaser's clients unfolded.

"Oy. I Spent the last 48 hrs at the NY AG's office and am glad to give you an off the record briefing and my observations," Glaser wrote in a Nov. 7, 2007, email to the federal regulator of Fannie and Freddie. The same day, Cuomo announced subpoenas of the two mortgage giants as part of an investigation into widespread conflicts of interest in the appraisal process.

"These emails on their face indicate a serious conflict of interest, a conflict that could very well have influenced enforcement actions by Cuomo, much to the benefit of Glaser's clients," said Craig Holman of the government watchdog group Public Citizen.

... 

Glaser's years-old emails also show the importance of email preservation at a time when the Cuomo administration is under fire for instituting a policy that purges emails after 90 days unless they're actively retained. If the emails had been sent to or from Cuomo's current office or a state agency under the new policy, they likely would have been lost.

No wonder Cuomo wants to delete all those pesky emails after 90 days.

Then he doesn't have to worry about stuff like this surfacing in the newspapers or media.

Andrew Cuomo - The Dirtiest Man In The Albany Cesspool Of Corruption

So many Cuomo stories today.

First, the games he's playing with the Tappan Zee Bridge plan.

Then the story of how Cuomo, along with Chris Christie, used Christie's Bridgegate cronies to play games when they wanted to hike the Port Authority bridge/tunnel tolls.

And now this one, as has been all over the Internet today:

In early 2007, when he was state attorney general, Andrew Cuomo brought on a longtime confidant as a consultant on mortgage industry investigations, a move that has gone undisclosed until now.
The friend was Howard Glaser, and he had another job at the same time: consultant and lobbyist for the very industry Cuomo was investigating.

Glaser, who went on to become a top state official in Cuomo's gubernatorial administration, was operating a lucrative consulting firm, the Glaser Group, with a host of mortgage industry clients.
Later that year, Glaser provided insights on Cuomo's investigations to industry players on a conference call hosted by an investment bank.

Cuomo's office ended up giving immunity to one of Glaser's clients a year into his term as attorney general.

Experts say the mortgage investigations Cuomo touted as "wide-ranging" came to little, even as he held one of the country's most powerful prosecutorial positions through the financial crisis and its aftermath.

... 

Before becoming a lobbyist for the mortgage industry, Glaser worked in the late 1990s under Cuomo at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, where he was known as Cuomo's "right-hand man'' and "hammer."

Glaser declined to release a list of his clients from the period he worked for the attorney general. A 2008 bio said his clients included "mortgage insurance companies, real estate and housing trade associations, mortgage bankers, and investment research companies."
Glaser's dual role when Cuomo was attorney general "poses a serious conflict of interest," said Craig Holman of Public Citizen.

At least two of Cuomo's early investigations involved firms that Glaser acknowledged to ProPublica were his clients. The client that was granted immunity in return for cooperation was the mortgage due diligence firm Clayton Holdings.

Gee, no wonder so many of the bad actors in the mortgage mess of '08 got away without prosecution.

Cuomo's right hand man, his "hammer," was working for both them and Cuomo, the attorney general investigating them.

I have written numerous times how Albany may be a cesspool of corruption, but nobody in that city - NOBODY - is dirtier than one Andrew M. Cuomo.

Could that be any clearer than from this Glaser story?

This Is Why Obama Sucks

Read this piece on HAMP, the Obama mortgage relief program, and the harm it has caused to one homeowner.

Then call Obama and tell him he sucks and needs to stop bailing out the banks and letting them get away with CRIMINAL ACTIVITY.

BoA Pays 1 Cent to the Dollar To Freddie Mac On Claims

The legalized stealing by the banksters continues unabated:

Bank of America settled numerous claims with Fannie Mae for an astonishingly cheap rate, according to a Bloomberg report.

A premium of $1.28 billion was paid to Freddie Mac to resolve $1 billion in claims currently outstanding. But the kicker is that the deal also covers potential future claims on $127 billion in loans sold by Countrywide through 2008. That amounts to 1 cent on the dollar to Freddie Mac.

Imagine if you had a $500,000 mortgage, and you got to settle it for $5,000 — that is the deal B of A appears to have gottem from Freddie Mac.

B of A also paid $1.52 billion to Fannie Mae to resolve disputes on $3.1 billion in loans (~49 cents on the dollar). They remain liable for $2.1 billion in repurchase requests, as well as any future demands from Fannie Mae.

My biggest complaint about the GSEs post government takeover is that they have been used as a back door bailout of the banks. This latest deal reconfirms that view.

Its a wonder B o A didn’t rally further than the 6.7% it surged yesterday . . .

And the Ny Times, the Daily News and the rest of the media continue to say union members and government workers are the "haves"?

Puuuulllleeeeeezzzzzeeeee...

In other banskter news, the NY Post of all places points out that the biggest contributors to political campaigns in NY were the hedge fund criminal and bankster class:

ALBANY -- Wealthy boosters of charter schools, led by billionaire hedge-funder Bruce Kovner, were among the top donors to candidates for state office in 2010, according to a fund-raising analysis released yesterday.

The campaign-finance report by a coalition of good-government groups found Kovner, whose hedge fund, Caxton Associates, manages some $10 billion in assets, gave $283,200 to state campaigns last year, more than any other individual donor.

...

Even Kovner's contributions, however, could soon be eclipsed by a potentially more influential supporter of charter schools, Mayor Bloomberg. The billionaire mayor reportedly donated $900,000 of his own money to the Senate Republicans, although that wouldn't have to be reported until later this month.

Other education-reform advocates to generously back candidates in the last election include: National Heritage Academies founder J.C. Huizenga ($214,250), Greenlight Capital chief David Einhorn ($191,800) and conservative financier Roger Hertog ($181,835).

Charter advocates say the donations help counteract the influence from teachers unions that often oppose charters and are usually among the state's biggest spenders on lobbying and campaign finance.

Charter supporters and teachers unions clashed fiercely last year over state efforts to apply for the Obama administration's pro-charter Race to the Top education-aid program.

Top contributors also included donors not associated with the charter movement per se, such as David Rich ($221,548), heir to the Rich frozen-food empire, and hedge-fund manager James Simons ($217,350). Both men's top contributions went to Democrats, including Gov. Cuomo.

In all, 18 individuals donated more than $150,000 in this past election cycle. Only 59,350 of the state's 19.4 million residents donated to campaign funds.

Business groups contributed the most, donating $67 million, or 27 percent of all donations. Real-estate and construction groups accounted for the largest share of that, or $14 million.

Labor unions followed, donating $21 million, or 8 percent of all donations. Public-employee unions dominated that list.

And let's not forget how much money Little Andy Cuomo took from the hedge fund/education deform criminals.

So while Cuomo rails against unions and saves money from his 2010 campaign to blast unions in the media for not agreeing to pay cuts, pension cuts and work protection losses, he is rolling in the dough from the hedge fund criminals and banksters even as they're quite literally stealing the country blind.

Of course Cuomo can cut his official salary by 5% to make it look like he's sacrificing along with the rest of us.

If he really wanted to sacrifice, he'd stop taking money from hedge fund managers and banksters and donate his leftover campaign treasure to the state deficit.

And the banskter influence goes well beyond New York.

Let me point out that President Obama plans to name a bankster to be his new chief of staff.

Because the banksters and hedge fund criminals just don't have enough power or influence in this country, you know?

Hey, Whitney, The SEC Believes In Fraudclosure, How Come You Don't?

Yesterday I posted that hedge fund criminal and DFER Whitney Tilson shrugged off bank abuses in foreclosures, saying:

"I'd be very surprised if there were more than 1% of people who were actually kicked out of their homes who were actually current on their payments," he told us.

He explains Foreclosure-gate in one simple sentence.

"What has happened is, some percentage of foreclosures were probably legitimate foreclosures, but the letter of law was not followed because the system wasn't designed to handle the amount of volume of foreclosures that occurred, and banks, lawfirms, etc cut corners."

On Friday, Reuters reported that the SEC is expanding its investigation into the fraudclosure mess:

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, Dec 17 (Reuters) - U.S. regulators have opened a new line of inquiry in their mortgage foreclosure probe and are asking big Wall Street banks about the beginning stages of mortgage securitization, two sources familiar with the probe said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission launched the new phase of its investigation by sending out a fresh round of subpoenas last week to big banks like Bank of America Corp (BAC.N), Citigroup Inc (C.N), JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) and Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N), the sources said.

The subpoenas focus on the earliest stage of the mortgage securitization process, said the sources, who requested anonymity because the probe is not public.

The sources said the SEC is asking for information about the role of so-called "master servicers" -- specialized firms that oversee the selection and maintenance of the large pool of home loans that go into every mortgage-backed bond.

In many cases, Wall Street banks that underwrite mortgage-backed securities either own their own master servicing firms or are closely aligned with one.

In the fall, the SEC began looking into the banks' foreclosure practices following allegations that mortgage servicers like Bank of America were using shoddy paperwork to evict delinquent borrowers from their homes.

The Justice Department, banking regulators and the attorneys general in all 50 U.S. states are also probing potential wrongdoing.

One of the sources said the SEC is seeking information about the role banks had in mortgage securitization. The regulator is also looking at the role trustees for the trusts that issued the mortgage-backed securities had in monitoring the performance of the underlying loans.

The SEC is looking at whether loans were properly transferred to the trusts that issued the securities, the source said.

The renewed look at the securitization process is an extension of the SEC's preliminary probe into the mortgage mess. The SEC's regional offices are all looking at some aspect of the foreclosure crisis.

In related news, both Nevada and Arizona are suing Bank of America for violating consumer protection laws in the loan modification process:

PHOENIX – Attorneys general in Arizona and Nevada filed civil lawsuits Friday against Bank of America Corp., alleging that the lender is misleading and deceiving homeowners who have tried to modify mortgages in two of the nation's most foreclosure-damaged states.

Bank of America violated Arizona's consumer fraud law by misleading consumers who tried to reduce their monthly payments to keep their homes, state Attorney General Terry Goddard said. The bank also violated the terms of a 2009 consent agreement requiring its Countrywide mortgage subsidiary to implement a loan modification program, the Arizona lawsuit alleges.

Hundreds of homeowners kept making their mortgage payments because Bank of America repeatedly assured them that their loans were being modified, Goddard said. Instead, many lost their homes anyway.

"Those people could have used that money for something else," Goddard told The Associated Press. "They were deceived into continuing to make mortgage payments when they had no hope of saving their homes."

Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto told the AP that the Silver State's lawsuit was a last resort to try to get the bank to change its ways. It was filed after several discussions with bank managers led to assurances but little more.

"Clearly there is a disconnect between what Bank of America tells me at the management level and what's happening on the front line," Masto said.

Masto said separate lawsuits show the bank's problems with consumers are widespread.

"The only thing that I'm asking is that (Bank of America) give them a reasonable response in a timely manner," she said. "It is, in my perspective, a callous disregard for what we are telling them."

The SEC is expanding its investigation into fraudulent paperwork in the securitization process, Nevada and Arizona are suing BoA for massive fraud in the loan modification process, but Whitney Tilson thinks it's all good, the banks are just a little behind in the paperwork so they're speeding up the process by, you know, cutting some corners. But move along here, there's nothing to see, it's all fine and dandy, they're only breaking tiny little laws and most of these people are deadbeats anyway...

There are few people as despicable as hedge fund criminal Whitney Tilson.

Education Reform Brought To Us By The Same People Who Brought The Mortgage and Foreclosure Mess

I have spent an awful lot of time, energy and space bashing Wall Street, our corporate culture, including the media, and our Dear Leaders in Washington - both Bush and Obama - for the financial crisis that began unfolding in 2007 and nearly brought the country to ruin in 2008-2009.

But the stories about the foreclosure mess that have hit the news in the last month truly take my breath away - people having their homes foreclosed upon who didn't even have mortgages, banks hiring Walmart floorwalkers as "mortgage experts" and having these "robosigners" sign off on thousands of foreclosures a month without knowing what exactly they were signing off on, banks hiring companies to illegally change the locks on doors of people's homes.

Barry at The Big Picture has been right on this story and with his expertise and knowledge of finance and the markets, he is a terrific resource to go to if you want to catch up on this story.

But the Kaplan Test Prep Post has a pretty good article this morning about the mess that says the rule of law has been superseded in a SYSTEMIC WAY by the banksters, hedge fund criminals and other Wall Streeters who believe they are TOO BIG TO FAIL:

Millions of homes have been seized by banks during the economic crisis through a mass production system of foreclosures that was set up to prioritize one thing over everything else: speed.

With 2 million homes in foreclosure and another 2.3 million seriously delinquent on their mortgages - the biggest logjam of distressed properties the market has ever seen - companies involved in the foreclosure process were paid to move cases quickly through the pipeline.

Law firms competed with one another to file the largest number of foreclosures on behalf of lenders - and were rewarded for their work with bonuses. These and other companies that handled the preparation of documents were paid for volume, so they processed as many as they could en masse, leaving little time to read the paperwork and catch errors.

And the big mortgage companies overseeing it all - including government-owned Fannie Mae - were so eager to get bad loans off their books that they imposed a penalty on contractors if they moved too slowly.

The system was so automated and so inflexible that once a foreclosure process began, homeowners and consumer advocates say, there was often no way to stop it.

"The problem is when you try to fight back against this machine, well, it's a machine," said Michael Alex Wasylik, an attorney for homeowners in Dade City, Fla. "You have to be able to get your case off the mass production line and to someone who will take the time to read what they file, but in many mortgage firms that person doesn't exist."

The financial incentives show that the problems plaguing the foreclosure process extend well beyond a few, low-ranking document processors who forged documents or failed to review foreclosure files even as they signed off on them. In fact, virtually everyone involved - loan servicers, law firms, document processing companies and others - made more money as they evicted more borrowers from their homes, creating a system that was vulnerable to error and difficult for homeowners to challenge.

"This was a systemic problem. It's not like a few renegade employees made mistakes," said lawyer Peter Ticktin, who defends Florida homeowners facing foreclosure. "It was industry-wide and pervasive, and everyone knew about it."

Ah, yes - the machine.

Therein lies the problem.

The country is now run by machines - machines that are owned by a wealthy few who do not care about anything but making sure the machines run efficiently and their money comes in every month.

Problems with the process?

Fuck you, where's my money!

Bank doesn't have proof that it owns the mortgage?

Fuck you, where's my money!

Bank is foreclosing on a homeowner who doesn't actually have a mortgage?

Fuck you, where's my money!

The only thing that matters is the money.

Truth, honesty, fairness, property rights, the Rule of Law, ethical business practices - none of these things matter.

The only thing that matters is the money.

This is where globalization, free trade, and the privileging of corporate culture over all else have brought us - the only thing that matters is the money.

And all this is happening AFTER these criminals nearly brought the country to ruin back in 2008.

Somehow, rather than hold the people responsible for this mess in 2008 - the top leadership at Goldman Sachs, at AIG, at Bear Stearns, at Lehman, at Merrill Lynch, at Morgan Stanley, at Citigroup, at HSBC, at BoA, at JP Morgan Chase, at Countrywide Financial, at the hedge funds, as well as the politicians who enabled this to happen like Clinton, Bush, most of the U.S. Congress, the freaking cheerleaders in the news media, and the regulators like Greenspan and Geithner who were supposed to be watching the store - we have allowed these motherfuckers to STILL run the country, make policy, steal from the working and middle classes and enrich themselves off the public dime.

Hell, we're allowing them to BREAK THE LAW.

And now they're coming for education - putting the machine in place in Washington and in cities all across the nation to "measure" schools, "measure" teacher performance, "measure" student performance with batteries of standardized tests created by corporate companies with no-bid contracts, then closing down the "bad" schools and opening up for-profit charter schools in their place.

All of this is brought to us by the same billionaires and hedge fund criminals who brought us the Tech Bubble, the Housing Bubble, the Credit Crisis of '08, and now the Foreclosure Crisis of 2010.

And we literally are fighting back against the machine - in public education, Joel Klein and other corporate edu-deformers see online education as the wave of the future.

One teacher in a central location (perhaps India or Sri Lanka?) communicating with students all across one city.

What a boon for the corporate reformers!!!

You can fire tens of thousands of teachers, increase class sizes to one hundred students, stop investing in infrastructure like school buildings, and save municipalities millions a year in education, salary, and benefits costs.

This, my friends, is the wave of the future.

This is what the education reformers want to bring us.

And of course as they socialize people over the Internet rather than in classrooms, they will be disempowering the future generations from the ability to socialize, to communicate well, and of course to mobilize in the face of societal problems they may want to change.

Don't kid yourself, that is the plan Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, hedge fund criminals like Whitney Tilson, and other edu-deformers have for the future of America.

A compliant workforce trained just well enough to run things but not socially or intellectually conscious enough to know just how badly they are getting fucked by their corporate owners.

It is time to take back the world from the corporate owners.

It is time to smash the machines.

It is clear that this will not be easy.

You would have thought after the near collapse in 2008 that the scumbags who brought that about would have been banished from business and leadership roles in society.

Unfortunately those very same people - or people just like them - are still running things and still enriching themselves off the backs of others.

So I fear that a democratic movement is not going to be enough to take back the country from the banksters and the Bloombergs.

But we must try.

And we must remember that all these "crises" from the Housing Bubble to the Credit Crisis of 2008 to the Foreclosure Crisis of 2010 to the manufactured "Education Crisis" of 2010 are all linked together.

They have all been created to enrich the banksters and the hedge fund criminals like Whitney Tilson, and advance the power, wealth and prestige of billionaire vulture philanthropists like Gates and Bloomberg.

UPDATE: I should add that the "change agents" of '08 - the Obama administration - doesn't think the foreclosure fraud problem matters all that much and won't support a national moratorium on foreclosures until the problems in the system can be worked out.

Once again, the Obama people siding with the Big Banks and the hedge fund criminals.

How's that for change we can believe in!

POSTSCRIPT: Barry at The Big Picture has some advice for what to do if you have been personally harmed in the foreclosure mess.

Here it is:

My advice: If you have been in any way personally harmed by the illegal actions of any bank, law firm, process server, or loan servicing agency, you MUST file criminal charges.

If your home was broken into by a firm to change the locks illegally, that is breaking and entering, and conspiracy. If the wrong bank filed a foreclosure action, if the wrong house was foreclosed upon, its time to go criminal prosecution route.

Go to the local police department, fill out the requisite forms. Then go to your District Attorney’s Office or County Prosecutor’s office, and ask to speak to someone in charge. Tell them you want to prosecute. You can also contact your state Attorney General about the same. Follow up with written letters, that you send you your local newspaper and the NYT, WSJ, USA Today.

If any local DAs balk — some will know bank execs from the political groups and golf courses — let them know you will keeping a written record of all of this, and you plan to make sure that their opponent in the next election knows all about their bank coddling ways. When they stammer, hammer them about their opponent’s interest in who is and isn’t a bank bitch.

Corporations that get free speech rights also have liability for their own criminal actions. Its way past time we start forcing those responsibilities to have some meaning.

This is not about keeping deadbeats in their homes, as a few idiots and liars have asserted. The corporate sympathizers who are too busy fellating the bank to recognize what is going should be ignored. This is about fundamental property rights and the Rule of Law in the United States — nothing less.

Much of Barry's advice can be used to address a whole host of other problems with the system too.

Obama Admin Knew About Bank Foreclosure Fraud, Did Nothing About It

If true, this is awful:

Consumer advocates and lawyers warned federal officials in recent years that the U.S. foreclosure system was designed to seize people's homes as fast as possible, often without regard to the rights of homeowners.

In recent days, amid reports that major lenders have used improper procedures and fraudulent paperwork to seize properties, some Obama administration officials have acknowledged they had been aware of flaws in how the mortgage industry pursues foreclosures.

But the officials said they could take only limited action to address the danger. In part, this was because they wanted lenders' help carrying out federal programs to modify mortgages that had fallen into default or were poised to do so.

New concerns about improper practices - such as those involving faked documents or "robo-signers" who signed tens of thousands of documents without reviewing them - have prompted the mortgage servicing arms of the country's largest banks to freeze millions of foreclosures. As momentum builds for a national moratorium, the administration has begun assessing the potential impact, examining the threat it could pose for the ailing housing market and the wider financial system.

There is no evidence so far that the specific abuses made public in the past few weeks were known to government officials. Nor is it clear whether they were aware that the process of the selling and reselling of mortgages among financial firms - which became extremely common and highly profitable during the housing boom - was raising legal questions about who actually owned the loans and had the right to foreclose if they went bad.

But government officials were told repeatedly that the mortgage servicing industry was deeply troubled, according to administration officials, consumer advocates, housing lawyers and congressional aides.

"Have we talked to them about servicer incompetence? Repeatedly. Have we talked to them how the servicer system is broken? Yes," said Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates. "Have we talked to them about the costly stream of errors made by servicers? Yes."

In meetings and letters to the government, consumer advocates and lawyers accused the servicer industry of violating its agreements with the government to help slow foreclosures, saying it instead was structured to accelerate the foreclosure process.

"The message was that servicing needs to be regulated, and that the existing regulators of the servicers need to be on the job and needed to look at what has happened in the servicing industry," said Julia Gordon, a lawyer with the Center for Responsible Lending. "If it had been mandatory for servicers to engage in some kind of evaluation of the loan prior to foreclosure, you'd have seen a much different outcome for many borrowers."

Just more Change We Can Believe In from the man who wrote "The Audacity of Hope."

Given the record of the man and his administration, however, there is nothing to be hopeful about.

Not regarding him, at any rate.

Where's The Accountability On The Mortgage/Foreclosure Crisis?

President Accountability has vowed to hold teachers accountable like nobody else ever has.

Fair enough.

But as a teacher, I have decided to turn the tables and hold HIM accountable like few have.

Yesterday I looked at the economic mess we currently have with unemployment wavering between 9.5%-10%, underemployment at almost 19%, GDP for Q2 now expected to be revised down to 1.2% or lower, and jobless claims rising while economic activity is falling.

For an administration that vowed to have unemployment down to 8% and the economy revving by 2010, this record they have on the economy seems like a MISERABLE failure.

Yet rather than take any of the blame upon himself, or God forbid, actually change course and do something DIFFERENT (i.e., not listen to the two buffoons who got us here - Larry Summers and Treasury Timmeh Geithner), he has doubled down on the failed strategies, blamed Bush for the continuing mess (even though he's been gone for almost two years) and when that hasn't worked, blamed teachers and schools for the economic crisis.

Today I would like to take a look at the housing foreclosure/mortgage crisis and see how he is performing there.

Here's the latest news on foreclosures:

If you're waiting for relief on the foreclosure front, keep waiting. RealtyTrac says foreclosure notices rose 4% last month, the 17th straight month filings have exceeded 300,000. And RealtyTrac's Rick Sharga tells MarketWatch News Break that foreclosures may not peak until 2011.

Foreclosures not peaking until 2011.

Foreclosures exceeding 300,000 for 17 straight months.

Hmm - that would be the entire time President Accountability has been in office.

300,000 multiplied by 17...let's see, that would equal 5,100,000 foreclosures in the time President Accountability has been in office.

Now how long has the Obama mortgage relief program been in action and how has it been faring?

Well, the plan was unveiled in March of 2009 by President Accountability himself:

PHOENIX — Seeking to tackle “a crisis unlike any we’ve ever known,” President Barack Obama unveiled an ambitious $75 billion plan Wednesday to keep as many as 9 million Americans from losing their homes to foreclosure.

Announcing the plan in Arizona — a state especially hard hit by the housing crunch — Obama said that turning around the battered economy requires stemming the continuing tide of foreclosures. The housing crisis that began last year set many other factors in motion and helped lead to the current, widening recession.

“In the end, all of us are paying a price for this home mortgage crisis,” Obama said at a high school outside Phoenix. “And all of us will pay an even steeper price if we allow this crisis to deepen.”

...

Obama’s plan aims to keep between 7 million and 9 million people from foreclosure. Of the nearly 52 million U.S. homeowners with a mortgage, about 13.8 million, or nearly 27 percent, owe more on their mortgage than their house is now worth, according to Moody’s Economy.com.

Headlining Obama’s plan is a $75 billion Homeowner Stability Initiative, which would provide a set of incentives to mortgage lenders in an effort to convince them to help up to 4 million borrowers on the verge of foreclosure. The goal: cut monthly mortgage payments to sustainable levels, defined as no more than 31 percent of a homeowners income. Funding would come from the $700 billion financial industry bailout passed by Congress last fall.

Another key component would specifically help those said to be “under water” — with dwellings whose market value have sunk below the principal still owed on the mortgages. Such mortgages have traditionally been almost impossible to refinance. But the White House said its program will help 4 million to 5 million families do just that — if their mortgages are owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

OK, that was the plan. Announced in March, help 7 to 9 million people to stave off foreclosure. Sounds good.

Now how has it fared?

President Obama's plan to help the 11 million Americans whose homes are underwater isn't working, according to a new report that will be released tomorrow on Capitol Hill by the Congressional Oversight Panel. The plan called for banks to adjust mortgages for homeowners paying more for their homes than they're worth, but most aren't receiving the help they requested. Legislators are already demanding that the big banks to do more, but today, four of the nation's largest banks pushed back.

Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and JP Morgan questioned why they should reduce mortgages for those in over their heads. A JP Morgan representative pointed to the pricetag, saying it would cost $900 billion to help every underwater homeowner.

Middle class advocates say the banks could afford to help more Americans, whose tax dollars helped save the financial industry during the economic collapse. Advocates say no one is asking the banks to adjust every mortgage, and so far, evidence shows that banks haven't adjusted many mortgages at all.

Of the more than 1.1 million homeowners who signed up for mortgage help through the president's adjustment plan, only 170,000 have had their mortgages permanently adjusted. Experts say that's a dismal performance.

Gee - it's not working at all, is it? Just 170,000 mortgages permanently adjusted out of the 1.1 million who signed up for the program.

That's not a very good record at all.

But what happened to those who signed up for the Obama program but ultimately got no relief?

President Barack Obama's signature plan to combat the housing crisis has fallen short of its goals -- rather than significantly and permanently reducing home foreclosures, it is only delaying them.

The administration unveiled its Making Home Affordable plan in February 2009. Obama vowed in front of an audience gathered at Dobson High School in Mesa, Ariz., that MHA's signature effort, the Home Affordable Modification Program, would "enable as many as three to four million homeowners to modify the terms of their mortgages to avoid foreclosure."

The $75 billion initiative -- $50 billion from the bank bailout, $25 billion from government-owned mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- was designed to induce lenders, servicers and investors to modify distressed mortgages through a series of cash incentives.

It's not working.

In its first year, 1.5 million people were invited to try HAMP. About 40 percent of those who tried it have been kicked out of the program; fewer than that have been given an actual shot at keeping their homes.

When President Obama took office, it took an average of 319 days to complete a foreclosure, according to Jacksonville, Fla.-based data provider Lender Processing Services. Now it takes 461 days.

Extending the process by which homes enter foreclosure allows banks to continue carrying the loans on their books at full value, delaying loss recognition. That allows unhealthy banks to appear healthy, staving off costly bank failures.

Oh, so it helps out the banks but not the homeowners!

I got it now.

Just another Change We Can Believe In Obama program that is corporate-friendly and corporate-approved.

But still I want to know what HAPPENS to those who enter the program, get their mortgages extended for a while but then wind up being foreclosed upon anyway?

A Year Into HAMP, 'We're Losing Our Home'

Bea and Terry Garwood applied to JPMorgan Chase for HAMP help in April 2009 and were approved for a "trial" modification that July because they met the core requirements: their house payments took up more than 31 percent of their monthly pre-tax income; they lived in their home; they owed less than $729,000; and they were at risk of default. Garwood says the HAMP trial reduced their monthly payment on their two-story home in Pinckney, Mich., by nearly $500 to about $1,175 -- a huge relief, she adds.

A HAMP trial is supposed to become "permanent" after three months, but Garwood's dragged on for nine. "They kept on saying a bank statement was missing, or one of the documentations wasn't signed, or they didn't have the affidavit, or the hardship letter," Garwood says. "And then on March 19, I received a letter saying, 'You do not qualify for a permanent modification. You now owe us $12,000.'"

Chase rejected the Garwoods for two reasons, according to the letter Garwood received: The bank claimed their monthly mortgage payment amounted to less than 31 percent of their income and they failed HAMP's opaque "Net Present Value" test, a complex Treasury Department formula that servicers use to determine if a modification will make investors more money than a foreclosure. Garwood says that Chase assumed they had an inflated income by looking at deposits to their bank account and ignoring the money paid out to the people who work for her husband, a roofing subcontractor. If Chase went by the Garwoods' tax forms, she claims, the bank would realize they make thousands of dollars less every month and the couple would qualify for a permanent modification. Chase declined to comment.

Garwood says that the difference between their reduced payments during the trial period and what they would have paid otherwise, plus late fees, is $12,000. She says they can't possibly afford it all at once but that they would have found a way to make full monthly payments if they hadn't been lured into HAMP. They stopped making payments in April, shortly after they were turned down for a permanent modification. Sheriff's sales have been set for June, July, and now August. Garwood says she thinks she may be able to continue to dodge the foreclosure for a little while longer, but she's not exactly grateful for the extra time.

"They told us we were a great candidate, so we went for it," she says. "And as a result we're losing our home."

Wow - so those folks might have actually kept their home had they NOT entered into the Obama administration's HAMP program, but since they did and since the program is so badly devised and badly run, they are LOSING their home instead.

This is an absolutely ABYSMAL record on fixing the foreclosure problem.

The Obama administration would have been better DOING NOTHING than starting the HAMP program and other administration efforts that have made matters WORSE for homeowners, though they certainly helped out the banks, especially the ones with lots of bad mortgages on their books.

Perhaps that was the point of the program in the first place?

In any case, on both the economy (unemployment, GDP) and the foreclosure problem, the Obama administration and President Accountability have been MISERABLE failures.

And yet, no accountability for the accountability-meisters in the accountability administration.

Just more jive, more lies, more excuses and of course more threats sent the way of teachers.

But accountability is coming soon.

Oh yes it is.

And if the GOP nominates somebody moderately sane in 2012 like Pawlenty, Romney or even Huckabee, President Accountability is going to be voted out of a job and be sent back to the ranch in Crawford to pick brush with Bush.

Where's The Accountability At HUD?

President Accountability proudly told the National Urban League that he will personally hold every single teacher across this land accountable for the test scores of their students.

He said it's the least he can do as a citizen, a president and a parent.

Of course his kids attend swanky private schools, so what his parenthood has to do with public education or public school teachers is beyond me.

Nonetheless the buzz word for the Obama education policy is ACCOUNTABILITY.

But many political observers have been calling for some accountability for the Obama administration's piss-poor housing policy that has done little to alleviate the foreclosure crisis and lots to make it worse.

So some House Democrats have decided to make their displeasure with the president's policies known:

The House will vote Thursday on a measure to strip the travel budget of President Obama’s housing secretary.

The measure is sponsored by Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.), who weeks ago called for Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan’s resignation over what he and other California members believe has been the administration’s subpar response to the housing and foreclosure crisis that has crippled the state’s housing market.

Cardoza’s California district is one of the hardest hit in the country by the housing crisis.

If the measure passes, it would be a shot across the bow against the Obama administration’s handling of the foreclosure crisis.

Donovan will meet Thursday morning with Cardoza and other members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, where he was expected to receive a verbal berating by Democrats representing districts with disproportionately high home foreclosure rates.

And why are people pissed off at the HUD secretary and President Obama over the housing crisis?

Take a look here:

WASHINGTON — More than three years into the housing crisis that helped trigger a worldwide recession, the torrid pace of home foreclosures continues to tear at the core of the American dream.

...

In the first half of 2010, more than 1.6 million U.S. properties were hit with foreclosure filings, which include bank repossessions, default notices and auction sale notices. That's up 8 percent from the first six months of 2009 and puts the U.S. on pace to top 3 million filings this year. That includes more than a million bank repossessions, and while sub-prime borrowers and bad loans led the surge in foreclosures in 2008 and 2009, this year's wave comes from homeowners who've lost their jobs.

The numbers reflect the widespread and continued fragility of local housing markets amid what's largely a jobless recovery. They also raise questions about the effectiveness of programs designed to fight foreclosures, such as the Obama administration's Home Affordable Modification Program.

...

From the Bush administration's HOPE for Homeowners program to the TARP-funded HAMP program, community groups, consumer advocates and homeowners themselves say anti-foreclosure programs have been largely ineffective because banks don't have a strong incentive or mandate to modify loans that favor them financially.

Government officials envisioned the Home Affordable Modification Program helping 3 to 4 million homeowners avoid foreclosure by 2012. Borrowers who receive permanent modifications of their home loans under HAMP save a median of 36 percent — about $510 per month — off their original mortgage payments.

However, of more than 3.1 million eligible delinquent loans, only 389,000 have been modified permanently, according to the most recent government figures. Another 364,000 loans are in trial, or temporary, modification plans that could become permanent, but critics say that seldom occurs. More than 520,000 of these plans ended up being cancelled.

In a recent survey of 53 California mortgage counselors with caseloads of more than 14,000 homeowners, 60 percent said they had clients who lost their homes to foreclosure while they were working with a loan servicer to enroll in the HAMP program.

People try and navigate a bureaucratic mess to get into the program and get their mortgages modified.

The banks get a few more months of payments while people are trying to get into the program.

But then the banks foreclose upon them before they are approved and they lose their homes anyway.

How's that for change we can believe?

How's that for competence?

It sucks.

Totally sucks.

And instead of fixing the HAMP program and firing the people who created it, the administration tries to hide the data and run jive ass public relations briefings for housing reporters to get them to stop criticizing the program.

Now is that the kind of accountability we want to see from President Accountability and his administration?

Nope.

Certainly that's not the type of accountability he bragged about using on teachers today.

I've said for a long while now, if the Obama administration were a high school in Rhode Island, it would have been put on the SURR list and set up for "turnaround" as part of the Race to the Top program.