by Calculated Risk on 2/11/2011 10:10:00 PM

From Fed Governor Sarah Bloom Raskin: Putting the Low Road Behind Us. Excerpt:

Late last year, the federal banking agencies began a targeted review of loan servicing practices at large financial institutions that had significant market concentrations in mortgage servicing. The preliminary results from this review indicate that widespread weaknesses exist in the servicing industry. The agencies intend to report more specific findings to the public soon, but I can tell you that these deficiencies pose significant risk to mortgage servicing and foreclosure processes, impair the functioning of mortgage markets, and diminish overall accountability to homeowners.

I'm sure this has been said, but I'll say it again because I have seen little to no evidence of improvement in the operational performance of servicers since the onset of the crisis in 2007: Until these operational problems are addressed once and for all, the foreclosure crisis will continue and the housing sector will languish.
...
I do not want to revisit all of the sordid events that brought us to economic crisis in 2008 but, suffice it to say that, in the housing sector, we traveled a very low road that had nothing to do with looking out for the greater good.

This report should be released soon ... and it should be a scathing review of the mortgage servicing industry.