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Well, at least now we know. All the money we've dumped into the banksters' coffers to help them renegotiate possibly salvageable mortgage loans? They were happy to accept the money, but that apparently concludes their interest in the undertaking.

Credit the Boston Federal Reserve Bank for commissioning a study to find out the truth. The undertaking doesn't seem to have any "next step," though. Apparently, all you homeowners who thought you might have a shot at holding onto your homes, uh, you can go now.

Thank goodness Congress wasn't railroaded into giving judges "cramdown" authority to revise mortgage terms the way they can rewrite other forms of debt. That would be, you know, socialism. Or something.

And oh yes, you remember that widely popularized, plausible-sounding notion that the holdup on mortgage renegotiations was that hardly any mortgages are actually held by the banks that wrote them, having been bundled and sold? In the real world, apparently not so much. Check out the last paragraph. "The Fed found no difference in the rate of aid between investor-controlled loans and those that lenders own directly."

"One of the study's coauthors . . . said the government would be better off giving the money directly to struggling borrowers to help them with their payments, rather than to lenders that are averse to working out the troubled loans. 'Loan modification is not profitable for lenders,' Willen said. 'If it were profitable, they would go out and hire staff.' "
-- from Jenifer Kim's Boston Globe report today,
"Lenders avoid redoing loans, Fed concludes"

"The problem is worse than we thought. The failure to do these modifications means the whole situation stays bad longer."

"You have more money going to the banks and the servicers than you do to the homeowners. It would make more sense to just give money to the borrowers."
-- economist Dean Baker, as quoted in the Globe article

Click the link, read the study, understand that our government is solely owned and operated by a few wealthy corporations. Oh! And a big "FUCK YOU" for thinking it otherwise!