r, a move that was a formality. Diamond announced he would end his bid to join the central bank in an opinion piece in the New York Times on Monday, citing strong Republican opposition. As the 2012 election approaches, experts said it may be more difficult for President Barack Obama to fill thy're less likely to spend freely on other things. Home equity also serves as collateral for some loans. There are 74.5 million homeowners in the United States. An estimated 60 percent have a mortgage. The rest have either paid off the loan or bought with cash. Of the people who have mortgages, 23 percent are "under water," meaning they owe more on the mortgage than their home is worth, according to the private real estate research firm CoreLogic. An additional 5 percent are nearing that point. The outlook for the housing market remains dim. Fixed mortgage rates average 4.49 percent, extremely low by historical standards, and have fallen for eight straight weeks. But most people can't meet tougher lending requirements. Falling rates make it easier to refinance, too, but many of the people who can afford to do that already have. And foreclosures keep hammering the housing market. On Thursday, the Obama administration said the three largest U.S. lenders — Wells Fargo, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase — haven't helped enough people lower their mortgage payments to stay in their homes. The government said it has started withholding the cash incentives it established for lenders under its 2-year-old foreclosure prevention program. The administration had hoped the program would prevent as many as 4 million foreclosures, but it has helped fewer than 700,000 people. Foreclosures have economic ripples: Homes in foreclosure sell at a 20 percent discount on average, and those discounts erode prices throughout a neighborhood. Many foreclosure sales have been delayed while federal regulators, state attorneys general and banks review how those foreclosures were carried out over the past two years. When those foreclosures go through, prices may fall even further. Home prices are expected to keep falling until the number of foreclosures for sale is reduced, companies start hiring in greater force, banks ease lending rules and more people think it makes financial sense again to buy a house. In some areas of the country, that could take years. The Federal Reserve report found that Americans' overall net worth grew 1.65 percent in the January-to-March period, to $58.06 trillion, mostly because of stock market gains. Most of those gains have been erased since March, though. Net worth is the value of assets such as homes and stocks, minus debts like mortgages and credit cards. The report found household debt declined at an annual rate of 2 percent from the previous quarter, mostly because of a decline in mortgage debt, which has fallen for 12 straight quarters. But the decline is deceiving. Mortgage debt is coming down because so many Americans are defaulting on payments and losing their homes to foreclosure, not just because people are paying off loans. "A lot of this debt reduction is not voluntary," said Dana Saporta, director of U.S. economics at Credit Suisse. The Fed report suggests the average household owes about $119,000 on mortgages, credit cards, auto loans and other debt. Debt now equals 119 percent of the money Americans