Only a very small fraction of mortgage modifications made under the $75 billion Making Home Affordable program have been made permanent, triggering some tough talk from the Obama administration, but clearly showing that the program, launched last spring, still needs work if it’s going to make a dent in the ongoing foreclosure crisis. With just over 100,000 homeowners receiving permanent changes to their loans, the administration contends that it is still on track to permanently modify 3 to 4 million loans over the next few years.

In related news, the oversight panel assembled to assess the progress of the Troubled Asset Relief Program released a report in December offering, in part, its own concerns on Making Home Affordable (whose funding comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), because banks that did receive TARP funds were not modifying loans as quickly as the government had hoped. “The Making Home Affordable Program has not yet shown that it has the scale, the scope, or the permanence to resolve the foreclosure crisis,” said Elizabeth Warren, who chairs the Congressional Oversight Panel.