http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/29/money-first-questions-later_n_776135.html
Hey, it looks as if someone finally followed a thought all the way through.
Why are we bailing the banks when they don't hold the Mortgage!
Ding Ding Ding!
Damon Silvers has just asked Phyllis Caldwell the 64 thousand dollar question.
And Naturally she couldn't answer it truthfully, so she gave the standard answer of WE don't know!
But really shouldn't she know by now, the banks have actually publicly admitted it.
Did she choose to ignore it, or was Treasury just not listening again, choosing instead to carry on with their own agenda and bailing out their buddies?
During an oversight hearing, Phyllis Caldwell, Treasury's housing rescue chief, acknowledged during questioning that Treasury doesn't know whether mortgage companies and the owners of mortgages are receiving public money under "false pretenses." Treasury is investigating, she said.
The contradiction highlights what many critics of the past two administrations' policies have claimed for some time: they exert overwhelming force when it comes to saving financial institutions, but merely modest assistance when it comes to distressed homeowners.
More than $535 billion in taxpayer money went to firms and toxic assets as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to the latest quarterly figures from two federal auditors. About $992 million has gone to homeowners, the same data show.
So taxpayer funds may be going to companies that have no right to it, admitted Caldwell, Treasury's chief homeownership preservation officer.
"How do we know that people who don't have good liens aren't getting public money essentially under the false pretense that they have a good lien?" Silvers asked Caldwell.
"Again, we don't," was her reply. "Our focus at this point has been on..."
Silvers quickly stopped her. "Hold it," he said. "That's the issue." He added that he hoped Treasury "would be diligent" in trying to answer "what's potentially at play -- are servicers and banks getting public money under false pretenses? We ought to try to figure out whether that's true or not," Silvers added.
Caldwell agreed.
Those companies continue to get the money, though. Meanwhile, borrowers are tossed from the program for the same reason -- faulty paperwork.
