Loan Modification Emphasized

Loan modification efforts should be for the long term and investors should know about them, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. chair Sheila Bair stressed at the ASF's annual meeting."If a loan modification puts a borrower into a loan that they can afford, and the details about that modification are disclosed, we believe this will create additional market pressure for sustainable loan restructuring," she said. Ms. Bair also said that fixed-rate mortgages should be given greater emphasis in the market and indicated in a question-and-answer session following her speech that adjustable-rate mortgages "should be the exception, not the rule."