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Geithner: No one knows if mods will work
From this morning’s Congressional Oversight Panel hearing with Timothy Geithner: The Treasury secretary admits, more forcefully than I’ve yet heard him, that the administration has no idea of whether its mortgage loan modification program will actually work:
It’s going to take a little time to judge what’s actually happening…. We’ll have to wait to see the pattern of modifications and the extent to which they allow economically viable homeowners stay in their homes.
It’s a very complicated program as you know, and a complicated set of incentives we’re trying to o change. What we have is both a problem and opportunity…as we see problems in design or challenges in implementation we’ll try to fix those.
That’s a fair and honest assessment from Geithner — quite a contrast to his dissembling on any direct questioning (primarily from Warren and commission member/AFL-CIO counsel Damon Silvers) about public risk, accountability, and expected outcomes on the bank capital infusions.
How the homes we live in turned into the monsters that ate our economy and the United States became a nation obsessed with real estate.
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