Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Never Mind

I had said at the Treasury meeting I had went to that a senior Treasury official had said they were moving fairly soon to some sort of writedown program. Apparently not so much.
Except that once the meeting was over, its main architect, Treasury flack Andrew Williams, emailed Nasiripour to walk that particular idea back, saying that Treasury was NOT (his all caps) going to do anything “major” in terms of principal write-downs, and that any moves in that direction would be no more than “tweaks”.

As Felix says at the link, their strategy has been to prop up home prices enough to keep bank balances looking nice until the economy rebounds and home prices sustain themselves. It might work, but I don't think it's a particularly equitable way to go about things and nor am I especially convinced that it will work. And...exactly what does "work" mean?