Success of Treasury's Foreclosure Prevention Program Questioned

A day after the Obama administration announced it had met the goal of modifying 500,000 mortgage loans three weeks before its self-imposed goal of Nov. 1, a congressional watchdog has raised numerous questions about the program's ultimate success.
The Congressional Oversight Panel found "there is reason to doubt" whether the $50 billion Treasury Department program aimed at modifying mortgages for three to four million homeowners in the next three years "will be possible due to problems with the program's scope, scale and permanence."

"The program is limited to certain mortgage configurations," the panel noted, saying that many adjustable-rate mortgages and interest-only loan resets will be excluded from eligibility. "The foreclosure crisis has moved beyond subprime mortgages and into the prime mortgage market. It increasingly appears that HAMP is targeted at the housing crisis as it existed six months ago, rather than as it exists right now."