Obama Foreclosure Program Criticized By Expert Panel

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Former Wall Street bailout watchdog Neil Barofsky blasted the banking industry on Friday for inflicting a litany of abuses on American homeowners, and issued a withering critique of the Obama administration for protecting those same banks at the expense of homeowners.

“Our entire housing system is built on a foundation of fraud,” said Barofsky, who served as special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program from 2008 into 2011.

Barofsky’s comments came at a special panel on foreclosure fraud at this year’s Netroots Nation conference — an annual gathering of progressive bloggers and activists. Barofsky and white-collar crime investigator Lynn Szymoniak, Massachusetts foreclosure activist Malcolm Chu, and moderator David Dayen recounted foreclosure horror stories in which bank documentation is in such disarray that homeowners who have not even missed mortgage payments find themselves facing foreclosure. In thousands of other cases, the panelists emphasized, homeowners who do find themselves in financial trouble are unable to obtain any kind of relief from banks, even when aid would be less costly for investors than evictions. Meanwhile, in other cases, the banks rely on an entire cottage industry of forged signatures and fabricated documents to push through evictions.

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