Obama's Latest Plan

The plan announced today by the Obama administration on mortgage modification is one more example of missing the target and too little, too late. The biggest fault I have with this new plan is that it is aimed at homeowners who are under water (fine!) but who are current with their payments. These are the people who are holding their heads high, making payments even if difficult. Ones the administration calls "worth saving". They definitely are worth saving BUT SO ARE the 4.5 Million other homeowners that are not able to pay the mortgage and are behind on their payments.
These are the people that need help NOW! The Obama plan is basically an attempt to shore up the results of their original mortgage modification plan that has helped at most 170,000 homeowners out of the 1.1M or more that have applied!
What Obama should do is kick some butts in the banks. Short-sales are a very viable alternative to foreclosure but the banks aren't doing much to make this type of sale "short". I have perosnally had a buyer walk away from a transaction after waiting TEN MONTHS for a price approval and I know of another buyer who waited a FULL YEAR without getting a price approval. This is terrible for both the buyer and the seller. Both transactions involved the same lender. A real American (wink-think about it- you'll figure out who!!).
A second task should be to speed up and streamline the existing loan modifcation process. It's way too complicated if 90% of the applicants are "blamed" for not completing the paperwork on-time or correctly and thus do not get their loans modified.
And lastly, change back the "mark to market" rule that was subverted in March 2009 and now allows banks to hold loans on their books at face value until the property is sold irrespective of what the actual value may be. The change in 2009 destroyed their incentive to negotiate or move quickly.

I'm happy for anyoine who can take advantage of the new plan BUT there'smore important and more pressing priorities out there and the Obama folks just won't make the tough choices.