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.
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.
The troubles of a Florida homeowner show how the loan modification program isn’t working as it should for people who are struggling to pay their mortgages but have not fallen behind. Servicers are concentrating on those in default, and say they don’t have clear guidance on how to screen borrowers who are not yet in default.
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