For the 21st century Home Owners’ Loan Corp, how do you recommend dealing on a wholesale basis with getting recalcitrant service agents or recalcitrant CDO Trustees to sell the mortgage at a substantial discount to face value? The refusal of those administering the CDO’s to settle mortgages (e.g., for fear of being sued by one of the dozens or hundreds of investors who own a piece of the security that includes that mortgage) has apparently been a major obstacle to achieving any substantial progress on the foreclosure crisis through voluntary work-out programs.

What is your view of federal legislation that would compel the administrators of mortgages that have been securitized to settle them/sell them cheaply enough for the new HOLC to be able to purchase/refinance the millions of mortgages that we read will be subject to foreclosure in the next few years if no effective steps are taken?

– make aid to states and localities flexible and open-ended. The goal should be to stop all cuts in public services and layoffs of staff. States and localities should be offered a simple deal: no service cuts and no changes in tax rates.

I agree with this. I am not sure I understand the part about the tax rates. The governor of CT is cutting back services that have been cut back throughout the years (e.g. mental health,) plus other essential stuff like children’s health services (Husky). But she’s not going to tax anyone who makes over $200,000 and seems pretty proud of that. I’d like to know how many other governors are doing the same. Seems California is screwed as well. In fact it would be nice if we all had a thread reporting on proposed cuts in our states and the effect that the stimulus package was supposed to have and how much money our respective governors counted on that they didn’t get. I see nothing comprehensive like that in the media, state by state.
And there’s nothing moderate about Joe Lieberman, Collins et al. Lieberman screwed his own home state.

Thinking a tax cut will increase revenues is all fine and dandy, but what if your intent isn’t to increase revenues? What if you intend a tax cut to actually decrease revenues?

The question now is how much government do we need, and the answer seems to be ‘more for a while’.

I say the $100 billion they cut out becomes the first down payment on universal healthcare. The rest is taken out of the hides of the well-to-do who have so damaged this country. When you move $ trillions to save bankers and banks, $100 billion or so for healthcare looks like chump-change.

Thank you for coming by. I was especially interested in your comment:

– establish and fund a full-fledged National Infrastructure Fund with the capacity to finance and to coordinate public investment projects on an ongoing basis. Congress would therefore largely delegate decisions over the type of local capital investment, including school construction which was cut from the Senate bill for no defensible reason.

It would be great to have you expand your thoughts on this. I did a series of Oxdown diaries on the National Infrastructure Bank and would be interested in your perspectives.

If this administration (and the previous) take a step back and look at the entire economy, there are indicators starting to show that the recession has bottomed out. If the recession did start in late 2007, then we are more than likely already on the up-side. The things we are doing now are probably going to cause it to lengthen over the long run.

Do we just continue to print until hyper-inflation kicks in?

No, we print it until the threat of hyper-deflation recedes. Learn some economic history.