Subprime Bailout

[Kitsune]

Who's going to help pay for all those homeowners who didn't read the fine print? Take a guess.

Christopher Cagan, director of research at First American CoreLogic, says rising mortgage payments on adjustable rate loans will force 1.1 million homeowners into foreclosure over the next 6 years. He estimates the cost of paying off the debt for those borrowers would be $120 billion.

But there's good news!

A spokesperson for Sen. Schumer says the senator is not suggesting the government should pay off borrowers' loans in full. The spokesperson says Schumer believes a mixture of counseling and restructuring of the loans would bring down the costs of the program considerably.

...and bad news.

Larry Litton, whose company Litton Loan Servicing oversees the payments on 400,000 subprime loans, says on average it costs his company $16,000 to put one of its customers through a "loan modification" program if which borrowers get moved into loans with slightly lower rates. That would put the price tag of a nationwide program to assist troubled borrowers at $17.6 billion, using Cagan's default estimates.

Hey, someone has to help all those people that make less than $20k/year and financed for $720,000!