As the collapse of the U.S. housing sector worsened in 2008, and the precise nature of this supply-driven bubble became apparent, I laid out a very specific “blueprint” for putting a genuine “bottom” in this market.
The U.S. government needed to commit $1 - $2 trillion paying-down the mortgage balances of U.S. homeowners, in order to restore some badly-needed equity for these homeowners, which in turn, would provide some stability to the U.S. housing market – by eliminating most/all “underwater” mortgages, and thus ending the incentive to “walk away” from these mortgages.
By 2009, with the U.S. government having done nothing to mitigate this collapse and U.S. homeowners having lost much more equity, I raised the necessary government ante to $3 trillion: enough to pay-down mortgage balances by roughly 20% (only a small fraction of the $10 trillion used to bail-out Wall Street). But there was a second structural problem in the U.S. housing market which I identified: a supply-glut which could only be “fixed” by bulldozing vast numbers of homes. (more)
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