The reluctance of banks to keep control of mortgages underscores how distant a recovery is in the home loan market.
The government also took a major ownership stake in the American International Group, and seized control of the mortgage lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in September.
Even more than the government's decision to take control of the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or its role in rescuing Bear Stearns, the decision was a watershed event.
When problems arose, executives and managers at lenders and loan servicers sometimes patched such holes by issuing affidavits meant to prove control of a mortgage.
Investors had hoped the sector would recover after the Treasury Department announced Sunday it would seize control of the mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to help stabilize the troubled housing market.
For all the problems associated with Fannie and Freddie, some housing experts say, allowing the nation's largest banks to assume greater control of the mortgage market would most likely increase costs for borrowers.
Its goals include a permanent extension of all the Bush-era tax cuts, repeal of the newly enacted health care law, a cap on discretionary federal spending and an end to government control of the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The Irish finance minister, Brian Lenihan, told Parliament that the government would take control of the mortgage lender Irish Nationwide Building Society and try to sell it or merge it with another entity.
However, its proposals for paring the budget deficit — canceling unspent stimulus funds, ending government control of the mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, capping new discretionary spending and rooting out wasteful programs — are hardly sufficient to get the nation onto a fiscally sustainable path, as a number of nonpartisan analyses have pointed out.
The government took control of the mortgage giants under the terms of the bailout, which the Federal Housing Finance Agency currently expects to cost taxpayers $151 billion, although the total price tag could reach $259 billion if the economy sours further.
