Sluggish Foreclosure Relief and Regulators

Here are our editors’ picks from today’s roundup of investigative stories around the Web. Was there a story we missed? Please keep sending us your picks or include them in the comments section below.

The Obama administration thinks its loan modification plan will help up to 4 million homeowners avoid foreclosure, but that estimate might be a little high, reports the New York Times. Only 55,000 borrowers have been offered a loan modification in the two months it’s been up and running, and an expert thinks it will ultimately help only 1.5 million to 2 million people. A Treasury spokeswoman says, “If you think about the context and scale involved, it is an extraordinary, rapid effort.” (Here’s our explanation of the loan modification program, along with the government’s other foreclosure-relief efforts.)

Also, AIG’s federal regulator, the Office of Thrift Supervision, “paid scant attention to the troubled insurer” before its implosion and subsequent $180 billion bailout, reports The Hill: Neither the OTS director nor the deputy director at the time had any meetings dedicated to AIG until a 45-minute conference call the day before the first bailout, according to their calendars. (OTS contends that top officials did discuss AIG before that call.) We reported in November how OTS failed to recognize the amount of risk that AIG had taken on.