Paul Kiel at ProPublica reports on the failures of the Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program to conduct oversight and hold banks accountable for following the program’s rules. A snippet:

Documents obtained by ProPublica — government audit reports of GMAC, the country’s fifth-largest mortgage servicer — provide the first detailed look at the program’s oversight. They show that the company operated with almost no oversight for the program’s first eight months. When auditors did finally conduct a major review more than a year into the program, they found that GMAC had seriously mishandled many loan modifications — miscalculating homeowner income in more than 80 percent of audited cases, for example. Yet, GMAC suffered no penalty. GMAC itself said it hasn’t reversed a single foreclosure as a result of a government audit.

The documents also reveal that government auditors signed off on GMAC loan-modification denials that appear to violate the program’s own rules, calling into question the rigor and competence of the reviews.

Some of the auditors’ mistakes are “appalling,” said Diane Thompson of the National Consumer Law Center, an advocacy group. “It suggests the government isn’t taking the auditing process seriously.”

Via Atrios, who points out “the Obama administration had total control of this.”