Fannie and Freddie’s aid is not enough for all 31 million Americans?

According to the reports by Reuters the administration of Obama is seeking to develop an efficient rescue program under which Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be able to ease payments for hundreds of thousands of borrowers and offer a model for Wall Street to do the same. Earlier at the end of January officials from the Treasury Department and Department of Housing and Urban Development along with the companies' regulator were discussing possible plan on who could get relief and how to persuade other companies to follow the initiative.

Yet the discussions are still being on with the Treasury officials trying to weigh the pros and cons of different approaches. Meantime, two largest foreclosure prevention projects undertaken by the official Washington didn’t prove much effective. While the programs were targeted at helping hundreds of thousands, actually only some turned out to be eligible for the aid. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own or insure 31 million mortgages which is 58% of all U.S. single-family home loans, but only a small portion of them qualify for a refinancing program. A similar project initiated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to help 400,000 borrowers was realized on just a few hundred.

At the moment high-ranking officials have a common opinion that they must relax the terms of any new foreclosure-prevention effort and accordingly they try to identify which late borrowers could keep up payments under a new home loan. According to some speculations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will likely be key instruments in the government mortgage-aid program that will tap between $50 billion and $100 billion from $700 billion financial rescue fund.