Business Week reports,

Laurie Goodman, a mortgage analyst at Amherst Securities Group, said in an Oct. 1 report that if government doesn’t step up its intervention, over 11 million borrowers are in danger of losing their homes. That’s one in five people with a mortgage. “Politically,” she wrote, “this cannot happen. The government will attempt successive modification plans until something works.”

It’s her last sentence that is frightening. My view is that the longer the government attempts modification plans, the longer the crisis will last.

The article begins by discussing the documentation problems with foreclosures. It introduces us to a not-so-angelic mortgage defaulter who has successfully avoided foreclosure for eight years. Read the whole thing.