Animus problems they face in our country. And so, at the end of this book, the main thing i encourage readers to do was become a cultural broker, get involved in your community, work at a literacy center, work through your church. If you see refugee walking down the street carrying a very heavy couch on his back, stop and talk to the person an offer to help them move that couch in a different way. If you see someone confused in a Grocery Store about how to check out, help them understand how to go through a checkout line. So, there are always people around from other countries in most American Cities by now that experiencedfrom an america stepping up and saying, how can i be of help to you . When that happens, the really interesting thing is i dont urge people to do this as some kind of moral duty or oppressive task they should take into their business lives. When people do this, they have fun. Th enjoy ite. They really feel good about b eing able to interact in such an informal and direct way with people whose lives they would never understand otherwise. Tomorrow, the cspan cities tour heads to north carolina. Well learn about the literary life of greensboro with authors of books about the women who took part in that citys civil rights sittings in the 1960s, the lawyer who lost the Supreme Court case plessy versus ferguson and propaganda from world war i. With the senate in its august break, we will feature book tv programming weeknights in primetime on cspan 2, starting at 8 00 p. M. For the weekend, here are a few special programs. 22, live fromst jackson, mississippi, for the inaugural mississippi book festival beginning at 11 30 a. M. With discussions on harper lee, civil rights, and the civil war. On saturday, september 5, we are live from our Nations Capital for the 15th annual National Book festival. Followed on sunday with our live in Depth Program with former second lady and senior fellow at the American Enterprise institute lynn chaney. Book tv on cspan 2, television for serious readers. Tonight, a discussion from the annual aspen security form on the dangers of isi and how the groups. The is using the internet as a recruitment tool. Here is a look. Ts Business Model is encouraging people to commit attacks wherever they are. Then whether or not they actually have any other connection with isil, they will claim credit for the attack. How does that reflecting in terms of what we are seeing in the moment . Weve seen an increase in the number of arrests related to the threat. Fromve had over 50 arrests criminal prosecutions in about month. T 18 in the beginning, they tended to be foreign terrorist fighters, those who wanted to go overseas to commit mayhem. More recently, we are seeing individuals inside the united who want to conduct terrorist attacks at home and they are being directed and encouraged to do so by terrorist group said social media. I think linked to the fact that it is social media, were seeing a definite change in the aregraphics of those we arresting. It is younger. So we are seeing now of these ar 30 yearsound 80 are old or younger. Of those, about 40 are 21 years old or younger. Recent a portion of the discussion held by the Aspen Security Forum on isis. You can see the entire program tonight at 8 00 eastern on cspan. It is book to2, be programming with authors and books on immigration issues. And on cspan 3, American History tv with a look at congressional history, including women in congress and the history of the house ways and means committee. Tomorrow on washington journal, Michael Warren talks about donald trump and his view on policy issues following last weeks debate. Young invisibles looks at millennial voters and what is important to them, including Student Loan Debt and health care. After that, political contributor mark perry looks at his recent article on infighting at the pentagon and what is the best way to combat china. Plus your phone calls, Facebook Comments and tweets. Washington journal live wednesday at 7 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. This sunday night on q a, institute for policy studies fellow and antiwar activists Phyllis Dennis on u. S. Foreignpolicy since 9 11. The recent negotiations with iran and the war on terrorism. Who is isis . All of those questions are important and i address them. I think what is more important because it is something we can do something about is what is the u. S. Policy regarding isis . We really go to war against terrorism . Are we doing the war wrong or is it wrong to say there should be a war at all . I think those are the questions that are the most important and that will be the most useful. Sunday night at 8 00 eastern and pacific on cspans q a. Next, a discussion on the federal governments Home Affordable Modification Program from washington journal. This is 50 minutes. Now joining us from new york this morning, Gretchen Morgenson with us to talk about home ownership. You can read the story of slack lifeline for drowning homeowners. Gretchen morgenson began with this program that homeowner set up to help these homeowners. What is this program. Theou know this was Signature Program that the Obama Administration wanted to put in place to help homeowners and it started in 2009. We have a long arc of performance here to evaluate. As you remember in the crisis the banks got huge enormous bailouts and homeowners were really left struggling on their own. So the program as it was called was designed to really help them and combat the idea that only the banks got the bailout. So what we have been looking at recently is a report from the special Inspector General of the charter program. Went backr colleagues and analyzed how many banks turned down or what number of borrowers are turned down by the banks for the program and the numbers were startling. Host from your story, here is a quote from christy saying, we are constantly seeing problems with the way servicers are treating homeowners and not following the rules. I dont understand why the hasnt been a stronger policing. What is going on . Guest i dont know if you remember this. Crisised the mortgage and from the beginning it was evident to anyone who looks at the procedures that the banks and the servicers the companies that send you your bill every month and take your money that operate the behindthescenes administrative aspect of a mortgage those banks were woefully unprepared for the folk four coat foreclosure crisis. And we learned how they were making up documents and creating documents and they were robust side almost automatically to it is not as if it is so totally a surprise because even prior to the program even during the foreclosure crisis and before we saw problems with loan servicers. But the degree to which this is problematic is that this was supposed to help homeowners and a borrowers and it turns out that instead of throwing them a lifeline, they are really throwing on an anchor and it is not that helpful. You profiled lucy circle. What was her experience . Guest she was in vermont. Her experience is fairly common. She wanted to try to get a loan modification. She wanted to try to get the terms of her mortgage changed so that she could afford it. She became disabled and could no longer work. She was getting Disability Insurance and she had enough money to make a mortgage payment that was lower than the one she had previously. Sendust got the runaround the documents, resend the documents and it just did not occur as smoothly as the program had been advertised and she actually had to and list the help had to enlist the help of a legal aid lawyer. A lot of homeowners have had to do that to fight on their behalf because you cannot do it alone. It is very difficult to come up against these behemoth organizations that are incredibly incompetent or just doing what they can to try to put off any kind of help to the borrower. As i said in the article you really cannot underestimate the butntial for incompetence as one of the legal aid lawyers told me. There are benefits to the banks if they hold off on giving a modification because the interest accrues. And soeclosure fees rise there is a monetary incentive to put off giving someone a loan modification. I dont know that is what is going on but it is a possibility. Many . Lucy is one of how who have had this experience . In thethe headline report, or one of the headlines in this special Inspector General report was that 4 million borrowers had been rejected for Loan Modifications by the banks operating the of anm. That is kind ironic or paradoxical number because that was the number the treasury and administration said would be helped by the program. Christy romero estimates that there are roughly 890,000 people currently in modification programs. That is far less than the 4 million at the program had set out to help. Host do the banks lose under this program . Guest the banks make money under the program. It is not a lot of money. Income. Incremental fee it is something that they are able to volunteer to do it they dont have to do it. The treasury did not require the banks to do it which was an interesting element because at the time, a lot of these banks were receiving billions of dollars from the taxpayer and yet the treasury did not require them to participate in the program for main street. There were flaws from the beginning. The way the program was set up evident that it is certainly not meeting its goals. Host how do people qualify for this program . Says my house is not worth what i paid for it guest there are a lot of rules in the rulebooks for who qualifies for a loan modification under the program. The best thing that a borrower can do is simply apply and to try to get through the maze of requirements. Where ite in a state is considered where the have to oversee foreclosures, you are in a better position because the courts will monitor how the bank is operating and if you have legal aid help that will really help you try to navigate these shoals. Applying for the loan modification and then finding out if you meet the requirements there are requirements that your debt to income cannot exceed to get a loan mod. It is a strict set of rules but a lot certainly could get in to the program but it does seem as though they are being held off and stonewalled. Host eric, you are on the air with Gretchen Morgenson. Caller good morning. Lets go back to the very beginning. All of this started under a republican administration, the deregulation with glasssteagall. With that did was open the floodgates of subsidies and corrupt or grams to these you by at comes to allowing commercial money to be used in investment banking. If you with separate these two they were not have this money to gamble with. What they would have to do then they would have to scrutinize these mortgages more in order for them to get any kind of money out of them. It is all on the Insurance Companies to pay up these mortgages. They dont care if they have to be paid or not. Its glasssteagall and republicans deregulation and that is basically what it goes to. Certainly there was deregulation and that was a central heart of the problem that emerged in 2008. We also had what was considered an innovation and mortgage products that were not regulated closely. The fdic was really the standalone regulator who was trying hard to push back on the innovation the banks for coming up with. These were these crazy mortgages were you only had to pay the interest and not the principal or a mortgage whose payment exploded or ballooned at a certain point in time or the Interest Rate went up. Programse creative that wall street and the banks came up with to try to allow they were called affordability products. Many that people who may be should not buy as much of a house could afford that house using these crazy mortgages. Regulators were nowhere to be found on that turf. They were not regulating that closely in the fdic tried and was pushed back by the federal reserve. It was really very obvious to a lot of people that they would end up badly. I agree that there was a deregulatory element involved in the crisis and how it came about. Host peter, a republican. Good morning. Caller miss mortenson, i read your book reckless endangerment. It was great. I recommend it to my question is, and i asked this two peter wallace, because i read his rebuttal to the majority in the financial crisis. Republicans blame democrats. Democrats blame republicans. I believe they are both at fault. This is my question. Bill Clintons Administration raise the mandates on subprime mortgages, according to your book. That created the incentive for banks to create these subprime mortgages to convert into. Ecurities in 2003, president bush went to ,arney frank and chris dodd that he thought there was a problem with fannie and freddie. Why didnt president bush reduce the mandate back to 3 in 2003, if he thought there was a problem . Peter wallace that question, and he couldnt give answer. I would appreciate if you could enlighten me, why is president bush knew there was a problem, he continued president clintons policy on the privatepublic partnership. Thank you. Guest i have not spoken to president bush about this, so i would only be speculating about what was in his mind at the time. I think, honestly, that we were in aposition we were moment of time when homeownership was something that everyone believed was a benefit to all levels of society, and the goal of pushing , as bill clinton wanted to do in his partnership in 1995, pushing the levels of homeownership of to 70 . That was the goal. Acrosstheboard goal, republican goal, a democratic goal. It was believed that that kind of homeownership is good for society. It was certainly good for business. The construction industry, the insurance industry, the banking industry. So much of our economy touches the home building, homeownership business. It was deemed to be a winwin for everyone. If i were to speculate, my best guess would be that in 2003, we. Com sort of coming off the com bust of the internet. Was a feeling that we didnt want to meddle with this large of a portion of the economy. It got to levels that were really unacceptable, and really could not be sustained. That is when, again, the crisis occurred. Clinton, maryland, monroe. Good morning to you. Caller how are you today . Host doing well. To give youuld love my information offline because i think im the perfect case study for everything you are talking about. When you talked about how they work being uncooperative hopefully i can get my story out in time. It was countrywide they were getting buyout by bank of america, in which case, paperwork got lost. I submitted it to different times to bank of america, in which case, it till didnt get approved. Know, whatople dont the banks will do if they will put you on these repayment plans, but you have to sell the repayment plan before they put you on a better repayment plan. What inc. Of america lost their class action lawsuit, they had to sell a lot of their bad loans, in which case, i got transferred and settled up in 34 days flat. What they didnt tell you is the amount that they forgive is considered w2 income. 116,000 reduction which got tacked onto the w2, and i owed money. I did my taxes on my own and didnt know i had to fill out a worksheet. This is crazy. There is so much that could work if it were better explained. Guest you did a great job of explaining it right there, i will say that. This is one of the reasons why it is unfortunate that so may homeowners like you dont have in these very tricky, convoluted, complex arrangements. The banks really do have the upper hand here because they are dealing with something they are familiar with, they have done it before. The woods, andin it is really tricky. As you say, so many different toes to get through rules get through the maze and thicket of these regulations. It sounds like you had a good outcome. That is wonderful, im glad to hear it. Our summary people that did not have a good outcome, and are still waiting, and are still a difficultand in situation. It is interesting. I received an email from a reader who said to me, why dont you get over it, this is so long 78 yearshappened ago, lets move on. What i find intriguing is there are so may people who cant move on. For me, i think it is really important that we remind people across the country that there are still a lot of people in trouble with their homes. Wehas not gone away, and cannot really move on. I thought that was an interesting comment to come in. Or a sectorlevel of people who say, lets move on from this. Host Gretchen Morgenson, some areas of the country have seen homeownership take right back up to prerecession level. Are there other areas with the values of homes are still not what they were before the recession . Guest absolutely. There are tremendous losses still in arizona, las vegas where the overbuilding was really excessive, and where there were a lot of second homes , a lot of speculation. People were buying houses to flip them, not to live in. In those areas florida was a classic case you still have a lot of pain and suffering. Even in areas where it didnt really go up, you are really still in a stagnant environment. Homeownership, the levels have come down dramatically. For me, i think that is beneficial because it isnt right for everyone to own a home. If you have to make these crazy loans, devise loans that are really toxic and end up being poisonous, to get people into homes, then i think theres something wrong with that picture. Host eric is watching us in georgia, a democrat. You are on the air. Caller good morning to you both. Wholeuation with this trying to get a reduction, we it wasght after get a seminar, and they four or five people to go on the stage and say wonderful things like they got their interest got at 2 , and they also loan. Ion, and a it just isnt true. Im with bank of america, and i just want to tell you something. If you two wonderful people for you to, in order get any kind of into any type of program to get help, they will tell you that you have to be at least three months behind. Host lets take that point. Gretchen morgenson . Guest this is an aspect of the loan modification process that has been very troubling. What sometimes happ