As I've said before, whatever one thinks about the ethic or politics of helping desperate homeowners, failing to do so will likely be ultimately seen as the major reason the economy failed to rebound. In my opinion, a successful aggressive writedown program would have been the right thing to do, not simply because it would have helped individuals but because it would have helped the economy generally.
But the priority was to prop up the banksters, from whom all economic goodness supposedly emanates.
