{"id":187499,"date":"2011-06-10T17:58:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-10T22:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/06\/10\/2-years-too-late-timmeh\/"},"modified":"2011-06-10T17:58:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-10T22:58:00","slug":"2-years-too-late-timmeh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/06\/10\/2-years-too-late-timmeh\/","title":{"rendered":"2 Years Too Late, Timmeh"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So, the US Treasury is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/06\/10\/business\/10hamp.html\">finally taking action against banks who have not engaged in HAMP in good faith<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: blue;\"><p>As the nation\u2019s housing market continues to teeter, the Treasury Department on Thursday penalized three of the nation\u2019s largest banks for subpar performance in administrating a government-sponsored program to modify mortgage loans for distressed homeowners.<\/p>\n<p>As part of a new assessment of mortgage servicers, Treasury officials said they would withhold incentive payments for the three banks \u2014 Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo \u2014 until the problems are resolved. At that point, those payments would be made, a Treasury spokeswoman said.<\/p>\n<p>In May, the three banks received $24 million in incentives as part of the modification program.<\/p>\n<p>The Treasury Department has previously withheld payments from mortgage servicers, but Thursday\u2019s action focused on some of the biggest players in the program. Called the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, it is voluntary for mortgage servicers. Nearly all of the nation\u2019s largest banks have signed contracts to participate. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Only, as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nakedcapitalism.com\/2011\/06\/treasury-waives-wet-noodle-at-big-banks-over-hamp-mortgage-mod-abuses.html\">Yves Smith observes<\/a>, this is not accountability, it&#8217;s accountability <b>theater<\/b>, from the folks who so f%$#ed up HANP so badly that, &#8220;<i>HAMP was so clearly a disaster that Treasury Department officials didn\u2019t try very hard to defend it in a meeting with bloggers that I <\/i>[Yves Smith] <i>participated in last August. The best they could do was claim that it helped the housing market by spreading out foreclosures over a long time period<\/i>,&#8221; so in this bit of  atmospherics, the banks <b>still<\/b> get their money, they just won&#8217;t get it <b>today<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p>Someone must have informed Timothy &#8220;Eddie Haskell&#8221; Geithner that even if Barack Obama would never fire him,<sup>*<\/sup> if the voters fire Obama, he&#8217;s <b>still<\/b> out of job. <\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">This fact that Geithner is unfirable makes a pretty argument against a 2<sup>nd<\/sup> Obama term.<\/span><sup>\u2020<\/sup><br \/><sup>\u2020<\/sup><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">We now have revelations that <b>Larry Summers<\/b> was more on the ball than he.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, the US Treasury is finally taking action against banks who have not engaged in HAMP in good faith: As the nation\u2019s housing market continues to teeter, the Treasury Department on Thursday penalized three of the nation\u2019s largest banks for subpar performance in administrating a government-sponsored program to modify mortgage loans for distressed homeowners. As &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1004,1051,978,1088,985,1173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finance","category-hypocrisy","category-politics","category-real-estate","category-regulation","category-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187499"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}