Home, Home I'm Deranged, Part 2

President Obama's foreclosure prevention program isn't preventing much of a damn thing.

Only 168,708 homeowners have received long-term mortgage modifications under the president's plan, as of February, a small fraction of the 6 million borrowers who are more than 60 days behind on their loans, according to the Congressional Oversight Panel's latest report, released Wednesday.

The president's foreclosure-prevention plan will likely assist only 1 million troubled borrowers, short of the administration's original goal of up to 4 million homeowners. The program is funded with $50 billion in Troubled Assets Relief, or TARP, funds, putting it under the panel's purview.

"For every borrower who avoided foreclosure through HAMP last year, another 10 families lost their homes," the panel said of the administration's Home Affordable Modification Program. "It now seems clear that Treasury's programs, even when they are fully operational, will not reach the overwhelming majority of homeowners in trouble."

Unlimited taxpayer funds to bail out the banks.  Millions of American homeowners got leftover TARP money at best, scraps from the table of our banking overlords, scraps that Republicans insisted be taken away from them.  On the other hand, Obama's vow to expand the program hasn't helped at all.  Yes, the program is better than the Republican alternative of absolutely nothing, but not by much.  Not by much at all.

Three million American homeowners are going to lose their homes still, and quite possibly a lot more.  That's going to continue to wreck the housing market, lowering housing prices, putting more homeowners underwater and killing property tax revenues for local and state governments well into the next several years.

The worst part of this is that while Obama has largely dropped the ball on financial reform, he's doing an even worse one on the foreclosure crisis.  It's going to continue to devastate our economy for a very long time to come.