WASHINGTON AND COSTA MESA — With pressure growing for government action to stem foreclosures, the White House moved up to next week the unveiling of President Obama's housing rescue plan, while major banks said they would freeze seizures of homes for at least three weeks pending the rollout of the initiative.
For months, Congress has been pressing the executive branch -- first the Bush administration, now its successor -- to come up with a program to curtail the growing wave of borrowers forced to give up their homes. On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner disappointed lawmakers as well as the stock market by saying the foreclosure plan would be delayed several weeks.
In response to that reaction, Obama is now scheduled to present the plan Wednesday in Phoenix.
"I think you'll see the president take a big step forward in dealing with the crisis that faces 10,000 people every day," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.
The moratorium announcements by big banks also followed pressure from Congress this week. At a meeting Wednesday of the House Financial Services Committee in which lawmakers chastised banking leaders for their role in the economic crisis, panel Chairman Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) asked the CEOs to freeze foreclosures until the administration's mitigation effort was announced.
A number of the banks said Friday that they would honor Frank's request, most of them pledging to wait three weeks, until March 6, to see how the Obama plan would affect them.
In a letter to Frank, JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said his firm was ready to work with the administration on an "appropriate process" for handling troubled borrowers, including a standardized loan modification program.
Other large mortgage customer-service firms signing on to a moratorium included Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co. and Citigroup Inc., as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage-finance companies now controlled by the government.
The suspensions of foreclosures generally apply to single-family residences and small complexes of up to four units. Vacant homes are excluded.
All mortgage customer-service firms are likely to participate in the moratorium, said Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance Publications.
