The Obvious Answer is Because They Don't Care

Annie Lowrey of the New York Times looks at the parts of the TARP that were intended to help ordinary homeowners, and it ain't pretty:

A fund to support homeowners in the communities hit hardest by the collapse of the housing bubble has disbursed just 3 percent of its budget and aided only 30,640 homeowners in the two years since its creation, according to a report released on Thursday by a federal watchdog office.

The Hardest Hit Fund, which was created in the spring of 2010, grants money to state housing finance agencies for efforts to help families that are facing foreclosure. It has “experienced significant delay” because of “a lack of comprehensive planning” by the Treasury Department and limited participation by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the large mortgage servicers, said the report by the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

“TARP wasn’t supposed to be just a bank bailout,” said Christy L. Romero, the special inspector general for TARP, in an interview. “It was specifically designed with the goal of helping homeowners, and our concern is that that goal may not be met.”

As of the end of 2011, the Hardest Hit Fund had spent $217.4 million out of its $7.6 billion budget, the report found. The program is intended to reach homeowners who are unemployed, or living in areas with high unemployment rates or steeply falling home values.

The report is just the latest to criticize the Obama administration’s efforts to relieve homeowners battered by the nationwide drop in housing prices and the broader recession. The office of the special inspector general has repeatedly criticized Treasury’s management of the Home Affordable Modification Program, Washington’s main initiative to prevent foreclosures.

By this point, they were supposed to have helped 2-3 million, so they are low by a factor of almost 100.

Think about it.  They had $7.6 billion to spend, without any meaningful oversight, but they couldn't be bothered to spend it.

This was not just an economic opportunity, it was a political one, because when they saved people, they would most likely get their votes, but it just didn't matter.

This is going on because the Obama administration in the person of Timothy Geithner, the last man standing of Obama's original economic team, simply don't care.

The Treasury has already admitted that the homeowner protection programs was primarily about allowing banks to buy time, and extract fees, from desperate homeowners before they wrote down the loans.

Helping homeowners was in the TARP because they needed it to get the votes, but if it ain't protecting the big banks and big banking, Geithner/Obama ain't interested.