MORTGAGE MODIFICATION PROGRAM A COMPLETE FAILURE - JUST LIKE THE PORKULUS

NYTIMES/AP:

The new president climbed aboard Air Force One a year ago for a trip to Phoenix to reveal his strategy for attacking the housing crisis. It was a signal moment in the buoyant early days of Barack Obama's administration.

The plan, Obama told a cheering audience of high school students, would keep as many as 9 million people in their homes by lowering their monthly mortgage payments. The program wouldn't save every home, Obama cautioned, but few people paid attention. Not with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner saying things like, ''You'll start to see the effects quite quickly.''

Ambition, though, got far ahead of reality.

The numbers show a program that failed to deliver. About 116,000 homeowners have had their loans modified to reduce their monthly payments, the Treasury Department said Wednesday. Only about $15 million in incentive money has been paid to more than 100 participating mortgage companies. That's 0.02 percent of the $75 billion available.

''We were attempting to set realistic expectations, but I think we failed to do so,'' Michael Barr, an assistant Treasury secretary, said in an interview.

... Since the program started in March:

--1 million people have entered the modification program, and almost 12 percent, or 116,000, have completed the process.

--A third of homeowners who made the three monthly trial payments on time have now fallen behind.

--More than 61,000 homeowners have dropped out, and hundreds of thousands more are expected to do so in the coming months.

--About 220,000 homeowners whose homes have plummeted in value have refinanced.

The process has been time-consuming, bureaucratic and fraught with communication mistakes. Borrowers often feel lost in a maze.

THIS PROGRAM - LIKE THE STIMULUS/PORKULUS - HAS BEEN A COMPLETE AND TOTAL EFFIN FAILURE.

OBAMA HAS BEEN A MISERABLE FAILURE - PISSING OFF:

• THE RIGHT EXPECTED IT - BECAUSE WE KNEW OBAMA WAS A LEFTIST AND LEFTIST POLICIES ALWAYS FAIL.

• THE MODERATES/INDEPENDENTS FEEL DUPED.

• THE LEFT IS UNHAPPY THAT OBAMA HAS FAILED TO BE AS LEFTIST AS THEY HAD HOPED AND ARGUE THAT RAHM MISMANAGED THINGS (AS IF IT WASN'T THE POLICIES).
  

I'D LIKE TO KNOW WHAT THE ODDS ARE OBAMA WON'T BE RENOMINATED.

I BETCHYA THE ODDS ARE NOW, HMMM... 5-3 SOMEONE ELSE GETS IT.