A top Treasury department official said Thursday that the government has still not imposed any fines on banks that do not comply with the Obama administration’s mortgage modification program.

In testimony before a House Financial Services subcommittee, Phyllis Caldwell, chief of Treasury’s Homeownership Preservation Office, said her department has pursued “non-monetary remedies” but has not actually imposed any fines on banks for not complying with the administration’s flagship $50 billion foreclosure prevention program.

I have a video explaining how the HAMP program works for consumers. You will see that it is brutal. The main reason it is brutal is the banks do not have to negotiate in good faith. They can simply decide not to agree. The treasury led by our indomitable Phillis Caldwell (twenty years in the banking industry) hasn’t even set up guidelines for the banks to pay back the money they took from the government. So, if the bank voluntarily offered to give the money back, they wouldn’t know how to do it. By the way, it’s almost two years and they still haven’t got the rules in place. Nevertheless, I think their priorities are right where they want them, Consumers second (dead last) and banks first.

Still, Treasury has not yet punished these banks in any significant way. “To date we have not gone back to take back incentives that have already been paid, but we have pursued many of the non-monetary remedies, including further actions and evaluations, and re-evaluations,” Caldwell told Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), chair of the subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, after Waters repeatedly asked her if she had “levied any penalties or sanctions.”
Even in the midst of a growing controversy over allegedly fraudulent foreclosure paperwork, Treasury has not imposed any penalties on banks.

The difference between how the banks are regulated under HAMP as opposed to how the homeowner is regulated is staggering. The HAMP program simply has no rules for recovering federal money paid to banks who refuse to cooperate. On the other hand, the banks can mercilessly stack fees on the homeowner and foreclose on his home after the trial period. Essentially a bank makes money both by getting federal funds from the program and then forcing the homeowner into foreclosure.

James Pilant

If they don’t have the brains to change course when they are obviously wrong. Yes, it’s time to become a relic of history, a monument to fear, stupidity and official indifference.

From the Associated Press –

In a climate of Internet campaigns to shun airport pat-downs and veteran pilots suing over their treatment by government screeners, some airports are considering another way to show dissatisfaction: Ditching TSA agents altogether.

Furor over airline passenger checks has grown as more airports have installed scanners that produce digital images of the body’s contours, and the anger intensified when TSA added a more intrusive style of pat-down recently for those who opt out of the full-body scans. Some travelers are using the Internet to organize protests aimed at the busy travel days next week surrounding Thanksgiving.

Let’s stop routine doses of radiation.

Let’s stop the pointless groping of our genitals.

Let’s stop the pretensions of serving the public while instead encouraging a climate of fear to induce compliance.

The TSA is there to serve the public not to hold us in contempt, not to treat us like hardened criminals in a maximum security prison. (The only thing they are missing is body cavity searches.)

They have never caught a terrorist. Never.

James Pilant