Destor, I am if anything usually MORE critical of this administration than you. But you're WAY overanalyzing these remarks. If this was a prepared speech or press release, then yes, maybe. But I don't think he means to say these people belong to some contemptible class of 'undeserving'. He's just throwing out different types of situations surrounding foreclosures and rough priorities when it comes to the question of whom to help. People who have lost their jobs and where restructuring the loan still won't help are a regrettable case where there's not much the government can or should do. They need to move. Basically if you have a finite amount of money to work with and trying to get the most utility out of it, you need to take questions of fairness into account. People who were speculating aren't necessarily 'undeserving', but they are people who got into the game as speculators, where a part of the game was the risk. These houses aren't their homes. And it's not the government's job to save every speculative enterprise in the housing game. So I agree with him that the priority should go to families who are LIVING IN that house, where these are their homes, not just businesses, and amongst those families, the priority from a pragmatic point of view, the money that there is should go to helping out those families who can actually save their homes through a reworked loan.

Beyond that, yes, the administration should be doing much more, and HAMP as it stands is a catastrophe. They should be hammering down on servicers involved in all the paperwork fraud on one side through the OCC and the DOJ, and as they try to offload their problematic loans, have F & F buy them up at a big discount, enough of one that they can take 30 to 40% off principal as they modify them and make these loans affordable again, without causing too much of a loss for the tax-payer.

My impression is the administration and the Fed have been doing everything they could to keep housing prices from a further collapse. Their reason being (the usual) - it would cause big losses for the big banks which still hold a lot of paper and own a lot of houses. This might lead to general deflation, which is OK for those on fixed income or with jobs, but a bonus killer for big finance and bankers, and ergo their political contributions to fund the ad rubbish currently on TV, which helps to swing elections, and elect Wall Street friendly politicians.

Whatever scintilla of effort the Democrats have made to help homeowners stay in their homes is, of course, more than the GOP would do when they take the House, which is kick people out even faster by quick and dirty legislation allowing foreclosures to proceed unhindered, and then cut housing assistance, Medicaid, unemployment benefits, the minimum wage, Social Security, food stamps, education grants, veterans care and taxes on corporations and the richest 1/2 of 1%.

It's all good Destor.

Hell it will even get gooder after Tuesday.

This time next year all public entitlements will be slashed in half except for those entitlements going to the big corps and the top 2 percenters.

Unemployment insurance, SS, SSD, SSI, Medicare, Medicaid...you name it, the program will be slashed.

Congress, instead of investigating the thousands of felonies committed between 2001 and 2008 which they refused to do, will instead have meaningless hearings of supposed misdemeanors perpetrated by the current administration.

Regulators will be hamstrung and/or defunded.

There will be more and more and more defaults on mortgages.

Health care legislation already passed will be gutted.

Speeches and presentations on cable news will become more and more radical and fascistic.

It's all goooooooooooooood.

And two years from now a former mayor of a town of 8000 folks and 1/2 term governor will be elected President of the United States.

....but is the President of the United States really telling the American people that if at the whim of the Angry Market God you are left bereft of your job and tossed out of your home that the government has no obligation to step in and try to stop that from happening?

Well, it would seem he is telling the American people that. And as far as I know the government doesn't have an obligation to do that. Every year going back since people have borrowed money to buy homes, people have had lost their homes to foreclosure. It is an awful thing. But I just don't remember anyone pointing out that these foreclosures should have been avoided as a result of federal government intervention. Government intervention has only come into the conservation as the magnitude of the crisis has risen to such a degree over the past few years. It's not because losing one's home in 2010 is somehow more awful than losing it in 2004 or 1990 or 1955.  

But it would seem the focus is not on the nature of the action being called upon, but on the word "deserve."  As if Obama is denying assistance because he is asserting that they are less worthy as human beings.   But to expect Obama to be able to push through this kind of assistance at a time when more and more Americans are railing against such a thing is expecting a lot.  And since this is being viewed as an obligation, I am assuming then it would be not have any sunset or some arbitrary number of foreclosure rate (i.e. we can sleep at night if only there is one 900 homes receiving a foreclosure filing).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sen-sheldon-whitehouse/why-we-need-a-foreclosure_b_776172.html

Sheldon Whitehouse, Good Guy.