Friday, January 01, 2016

Obama Program That Hurt Homeowners and Helped Big Banks Is Ending

Obama Program That Hurt Homeowners and Helped Big Banks Is Ending



"When President Obama announced the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, on February 18, 2009, in Mesa, Arizona, he promised it would assist 3 to 4 million homeowners to modify their loans to avoid foreclosure. Almost seven years later, less than 1 million have received ongoing assistance; nearly one in three re-defaulted after receiving inadequate modifications; and 6 million families lost their homes over the same time period.



"Now the program is ending."

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To me, HAMP is a symbol of the Obama administration's disastrous decision to put the welfare of the big banks that crashed the housing market and the world economy ahead of the millions of homeowners who lost their home equity, their homes, their jobs, and their retirement security.  Obama had a historic opportunity to break up these predatory banks, send a whole lot of banksters to prison, make the banks refinance underwater mortgages so that people could stay in their homes, and set up much stronger regulation of a metastasizing financial industry that even now has us all at risk again.  Instead he decided to bail out the banks and insurance companies without insisting on structural changes.      

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