WASHINGTON ? More than half of all homeowners who had their loans modified to make the payments more affordable in the first half of the year are already in default again, banking regulators said Monday. The new data raise questions about whether government money may be better spent on creating jobs, rather than averting foreclosures, said John Reich, director of the federal Office of Thrift Supervision office at a housing industry forum sponsored by his agency. "I do have concerns about allocating federal resources" Reich said. However, many experts claim the bulk of loan modifications don't actually provide much financial relief for borrowers. The government's data don't include enough detail about the types of the loan modifications that were made, said Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. "The quality of the (modifications) are not what they should be," she said. The U.S. economic picture has darkened over the past month. One in 10 Americans with a mortgage is either behind or in foreclosure, and more than 500,000 jobs were lost in November.
