Edward DeMarco, who heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, doesn’t want to make any harsh moves against the mortgage industry which has proven itself incompetent and untrustworthy. Instead he wants to avoid rocking the boat too much in his efforts to prevent further harm to the housing industry.
DeMarco said in an interview that officials were working to find a “tailored” response to the foreclosure problem that won’t cause broader problems for the fragile housing market. “We are trying to be quick but measured in the approach and the response taken,” he said. “We’re concerned about the whole housing market, and we’re concerned about what this means for taxpayers and other market participants.”
The reality is that the mortgage industry has been harming taxpayers every since they pushed homeowners into foreclosure by giving them toxic loans. They pulled the wool over our eyes when they took bailout money and then refused to do their part by modifying mortgages for homeowners who need to lower their interest rates, principal and/or monthly payments. They betrayed their customers and the general public when they shamelessly engaged in what’s now known as robo-signing and continued to charge illegal and inflated fees to homeowners who were facing foreclosure .
Why are we tiptoeing around the issue here? It is the mortgage industry’s collective refusal to behave in an ethical and even logical manner to help end this foreclosure crisis which has gone on for far too long, that is causing the real harm. If we want to put an end to the foreclosure crisis we must institute harsh penalties, including jail time for mortgage companies found engaging in tactics that harm homeowners facing foreclosure and damage the American economy.