The Obama administration today is rolling out details of its plan to help as many as 9 million homeowners restructure their mortgage debts and avoid foreclosure.Here's a link to the summary of guidelines for the program. There are plenty of additional details posted on the Treasury Department Web site.To be sure, the effort has evoked mixed feelings.The majority of folks who played by the old-fashioned rules of saving money and not buying more house than you can afford may feel a twinge of resentment at bailing out a lot of people who grasped beyond their economic reach.Others contend that many of the folks who are in a foreclosure fix got there through no fault of their own other than an unlucky turn in the economy or falling victim to unscrupulous lenders and their Wall Street enablers.The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in the middle. And the economy is already so weak that simply letting the housing market collapse could worsen the plight of everyone.My preference, of course, would be for the feds to buy up enough mortgage-backed securities to drive down mortgage rates and enable even more folks to refinance at new lower fixed rates. The resulting cash flow tsunami cold float the entire economy.Just a - modestly self-interested - thought.Submitted by Chris Lester on March 4, 2009 - 12:22pm.National Economy
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