Paul Kiel covers business and consumer finance for ProPublica.
In recent years, he’s focused on the U.S. tax system. The Secret IRS Files, which involved a team of ProPublica reporters, revealed key ways the ultrawealthy avoid taxes. Before that, he worked on The TurboTax Trap and Gutting the IRS investigations.
He has won numerous awards, including the Selden Ring Award, a Gerald Loeb Award, a Barlett & Steele Award, a Scripps Howard Award twice, a Hillman Prize, and a Philip Meyer Award from Investigative Reporters and Editors.
His work has appeared in several newspapers, including The Washington Post and The New York Times. He has also produced stories for National Public Radio and American Public Media’s Marketplace, as well as appeared on This American Life.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has finally acknowledged the depths of the problems with the administration's mortgage modification program. But in testimony before Congress this week, he offered no new solutions.
As expected, the number of homeowners being denied permanent mortgage modifications has increased sharply. And some 367,000 homeowners remain in limbo, stuck in trial modifications that have lasted longer than they are supposed to.
The administration has been saying that the Making Home Affordable program “will help up to 3 to 4 million at-risk homeowners avoid foreclosure." But the number of expected loan modifications is actually much lower than that.
After shrinking for several months, the bailout's cost to taxpayers rose in February, thanks to another big investment in Fannie Mae. Taking into account revenue that the government has collected from recipients, the bailout's toll now stands at $315 billion.
Under the government’s foreclosure prevention program, trial periods for mortgage modifications are supposed to last only three months. But some homeowners have waited nearly 10 months to learn whether they will get permanent modifications.
Some 97,000 homeowners have been stuck in trial mortgage modifications for longer than six months -- nearly two-thirds of them with JPMorgan Chase. But the Treasury Department says its lenience with the loan servicers is about to end.
The Treasury Department has spent more than $159 million paying financial companies and legal firms to help handle the bailout. Now the TARP's inspector general is looking into whether the government is getting its money's worth.
Chase Home Finance has rejected some mortgage modifications because it considered the homeowners' hardships to be temporary. The Treasury Department has since barred that practice, but those homeowners are left struggling to avoid foreclosure.
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