Relief for Responsible Homeowners One Step Closer Under New Treasury Guidelines

With Detailed Program Requirements, Servicers Can Now Begin

`Making Home Affordable' Loan Modifications

Extensive Borrower Outreach Efforts Underway
Washington, DC – The Obama Administration today announced new U.S. Department of the Treasury guidelines to enable servicers to begin modifications of eligible mortgages under the Administration's Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan – announced by President Barack Obama just two weeks ago. The release of detailed requirements for the "Making Home Affordable" program facilitates implementation of the critical provisions that will help bring relief to responsible homeowners struggling to make their mortgage payments, while preventing neighborhoods and communities from suffering the negative spillover effects of foreclosure such as lower housing prices, increased crime and higher taxes.

"Two weeks ago, the President laid out a clear path forward to helping up to nine million families restructure or refinance their mortgages to a payment that is affordable now and into the future. Today, we are providing servicers with the details they need to begin helping eligible borrowers," said Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. "It is imperative that we continue to move with speed to help make housing more affordable and help arrest the damaging spiral in our housing markets, just as we work to stabilize our financial system, create jobs and help businesses thrive. Economic recovery requires action on all three fronts."
"Only two weeks after the President unveiled his plan to help promote homeowner affordability, we are moving forward today with these guidelines to implement that plan," HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said. "This step forward represents a tremendous coordinated effort between major government and regulatory agencies to help bring relief to America's housing market and homeowners. This plan will help make home ownership more affordable for nine million American families and in doing so, help to stop the damaging impact that declining home prices have on all Americans."

The guidelines will implement financial incentives for mortgage lenders to modify existing first mortgages and set standard industry practice for modifications.
Treasury announced today that the Making Home Affordable program will also include additional incentives for efforts made to extinguish second liens on loans modified under this program. Extinguishing second liens will make mortgages more affordable, improve loan performance, and help prevent foreclosures.
In conjunction with the release of the new guidelines, Treasury, HUD and other members of a broad interagency task force have prepared consumer friendly Q&A and eligibility assessment tools for borrowers available at FinancialStability.gov. To ensure the program can be implemented as quickly as possible, the agencies also have conducted extensive outreach with housing counselors and mortgage servicers, including the development of call center phone scripts, a training plan and detailed guides, to prepare them for incoming inquiries from borrowers in the wake of the guidelines release.

An expanded online resource will soon be available for borrowers, and agency representatives will fan out across the country in the coming weeks to conduct outreach at homeownership events in communities hardest hit by the housing crisis.



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Current Economic and Financial Challenges

The economy suffers from a severe lack of aggregate demand, both from families and businesses – a problem that is driven by a slumping job market, where 3.6 million jobs have been lost in just over a year – the largest number as a fraction of total employment in more than a quarter century and the largest number in absolute terms in over a half century. This problem is made worse by a contraction of demand from many of our key trading partners.
Businesses, facing or projecting fewer customers for their goods and services, are laying off workers or cutting back on their hours or wages, causing families to further reduce their demand and businesses to respond with more layoffs and cutbacks.

This dynamic is made worse by a financial system that is unable to provide the credit necessary for recovery. You can see this across America as families find it difficult to get the financing they need to buy new houses and cars while businesses have trouble lining up the credit necessary to meet payroll.
The contraction in credit is causing more job losses and further declines in business activity, which, in turn, is adding more pressure on the financial system.
Both our economic and financial problems are being compounded by problems in our housing market, where a record 2.5 million families faced foreclosure last year, undercutting overall home prices, shrinking Americans' real estate wealth by $2.8 trillion from its peak, causing further reductions in demand, more layoffs and a greater credit squeeze that threatens another round of foreclosures.

You can see the scale of the damage in last Friday's announcement that the Gross Domestic Product, the broadest measure of the nation's output of goods and services, dropped at a 6.2% annual rate during the final quarter of last year. That was its worst performance in more than a quarter century, and the third worst in more than a half century.
In addition to a deepening recession and financial troubles, the Obama Administration inherited the worst fiscal situation in modern American history, with a federal budget deficit of $1.3 trillion, equal to nearly 10% of GDP – the largest that the nation has faced since World War II – not counting the economic recovery or other legislation undertaken by the Obama Administration.
And we begin our time in office after a long period in which our government was unwilling to make the long-term investments required to meet critical challenges in health care, energy and education.
This is the reality that we face today. These are the challenges that shape both the American economy and the Administration's strategy. I want to outline for you today the President's program for addressing these challenges.
Let me start with our immediate response to the acute problems confronting the country.

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Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner Opening Statement

– As Prepared for Delivery

– Senate Finance Committee Hearing

Chairman Baucus, Ranking Member Grassley, and members of the Committee, thank you for providing me the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the President's Budget at this moment of economic crisis, but also of real possibility, for the United States.
What I propose to do in the remarks that follow is to:

• Describe the economic and financial challenges that greeted us upon our arrival in office, and discuss how we are addressing them;

• Lay out the intermediate and long-term threats to our fiscal condition, and explain how the President's Fiscal Year 2010 Budget will return the nation to a sustainable fiscal position; and
• Explain how this Budget puts the nation on a path towards energy independence, better educational outcomes, and a reform of health care that both lowers costs and expands access.

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Why the Treasury Markets?

The Treasury markets were chosen primarily because of liquidity. The 30-Year Bonds and 10-Year Note markets are among the most liquid futures markets there are with the Bonds routinely showing Bids and Offers over 300 a side and the Notes over 500 a side.

What this means to the scalper is that execution in the Treasury markets should rarely, if ever, be a problem. This is a significant issue for any speculator and should be addressed before trading any market and Treasury$calper has done so.

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Volatile market conditions can result in prices gapping, which may prevent the execution of stop orders (sell stop, buy stop, stop loss) at the price you initially requested. However, our dealers strive to execute all stop orders at the price, or failing that, at the best attainable rate the market allows.

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Treasury Mulls US Bank Ownership: Reports

The Treasury Department is considering taking ownership stakes in many U.S. banks to try to restore confidence in the financial system, according to published reports.
Treasury officials say the recently approved $700 billion bailout bill gives them the authority to inject cash directly into banks that request it. A move such as this would strengthen banks' balance sheets and hopefully persuade the banks to resume lending. In return, the law gives the Treasury the right to take ownership positions in banks, including healthy ones, the New York Times reports.

The Treasury plan was still preliminary and it was unclear how the process would work, but it appeared that it would be voluntary for banks, the Times reports.
The U.K. government announced a similar plan on Wednesday in which it would offer up to $87.5 billion to partly nationalize major banks such as Royal Bank of Scotland(RBS Quote - Cramer on RBS - Stock Picks) and Barclays(BCS Quote - Cramer on BCS - Stock Picks).
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who has been pushing the government to take equity stakes in U.S. banks, said the British decision would provide a good test case for the U.S., the Associated Press reports.


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