It would be great if all the government geniuses down in Washington and over on Beacon Hill could find a way to pull us out of the economic doldrums. But after watching a series of grand plans to turn around the foreclosure crisis quietly unravel over the past two years, I can’t say I am too hopeful on that score.

Two years after Gov. Deval Patrick rolled out an ambitious, $250 million mortgage refinance program to bail out struggling homeowners, few loans have been made and foreclosure rates are soaring. To be fair, it is probably one of the best of a number of such state initiatives across the country, all of which have yielded similar results.

The federal government, meanwhile, has struggled mightily with little effect as well, with President Obama’s recently unveiled drive to rescue struggling homeowners also falling flat.

Now, in an even more frustrating development, Bay State nonprofits looking to scoop up foreclosed homes and condos to renovate and resell them are running into an inane bureaucratic wall as well.

The struggles of these ambitious efforts, both locally and nationally, to make even a dent in foreclosure rates should be a big red warning flag as government takes on an increasingly central role in our economy, from autos to banking.

Government Vs. Bankers

While state and federal governments do many things adequately, tackling complex and fast moving economic problems like the foreclosure crisis may not be one of them.

Not that the banking industry has been much help, either. If there is anything more slow moving and maddening than a government bureaucracy, it may be the corporate version of it. While financial institutions are likely to take a bath on many of these loans, they would prefer to take a long, slow ride to the poorhouse than cut their losses now and possibly save a few bucks.

The Bay State’s mortgage rescue effort was the best program that could be designed at the time, contends Tom Gleason, executive director of MassHousing, which has overseen the $250 million mortgage refinance effort.

But he also acknowledged the difficulty of tackling the incredibly complex foreclosure issue amid a housing market in free fall.

“In the stock market they say you never want to catch a falling knife – you never know where the bottom is going to be,” Gleason said. “We have been chasing prices of properties downhill, trying to refinance them.”

Still, the outlook did not seem so gloomy two years ago one bright hot day in the summer of 2007.

Speaking to housing activists gathered at the State House, Patrick, then newly elected as governor, rolled out an ambitious $250 million initiative to try and roll back a rising tide of foreclosures that was starting to make headlines.

The aim of the impressive sounding initiative was to steer hapless homeowners stuck with crazy subprime mortgage into traditional loans and curb growing default rates.

But that $250 million initiative has come nowhere close to living up to its stated potential. Two years out, only 40 loans have been made, totaling $9 million.

Prove It!

Loan counselors working with homeowners on the edge were shaking their heads not long after the announcement. One major early stumbling block: a requirement that those seeking help prove they were victims of mortgage fraud.

That’s a tough case for many prosecutors to prove, let alone someone who is within a few weeks of being evicted from their home.

But the initiative, however well meaning, was hobbled by an even bigger obstacle, loan-to-value requirements that might have been outdated when they were rolled out two years ago.

Homeowners can only refinance with one of these new mortgages if the loan-to-value ratio is no more than 105 percent. A tiny bit underwater is OK, but not a lot.

Anyway, 105 percent was a stretch even in 2007, when the great home price decline was just picking up speed, MassHousing’s Gleason notes. But then again, no investors would back a product with a higher loan-to-value ratio.

But it’s a near impossible qualification for most struggling homeowners to meet now, after two more years of falling prices have put vast swaths of the marketplace underwater.

To be fair, that has left the Patrick administration, as it has struggled to save homeowners from foreclosure, effectively trying to hit a moving target. Officials at MassHousing have since shifted tactics and have done hundreds of mortgage modifications instead.

“That is probably as successful as any program in the country,” Gleason noted of the $250 million effort, which featured about $60 million in MassHousing money and the rest from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Federal officials are now looking at raising the loan-to-value ratio of up to 125 percent in a bid to help homeowners whose mortgages are now significantly underwater, but even that might not be enough given the speed with which values are declining.

Given it’s unlikely that foreclosure prevention efforts are going to stop this epidemic in its tracks, nonprofit housing developers are now scrambling to buy up foreclosed homes and condos.

Yet here again, the government stepped up to offer help, only to fall short in the implementation.

Last summer, in the waning days of the Bush administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced plans to funnel hundreds of millions to local groups to buy up foreclosed properties. But HUD kept moving the program’s launch date forward, raising serious questions about whether properties bought earlier could be paid for with federal funds.

Suddenly, what looked like a small victory for the good guys was instead a giant mess, with shoestring budget nonprofits holding the bag on properties they might not be able to pay for.

Fortunately, the Patrick administration has stepped in with money for some of these deals, and HUD has finally gotten around to officially launching the program, so new deals can be made. Yet, like the foreclosure prevention efforts that stalled even as thousands were facing eviction, the delay has been potentially costly.

Still, local housing activists are hopeful there’s still time to get into the game and buy hundreds, if not thousands, of distressed condos and homes across the Boston area.

I just hope they are right. The best thing anyone can do, either on Beacon Hill or down in Washington, is hand these guys the money they need and then get out of the way.