From a reader:

Jonah–
Obama is talking about the Home Owners Loan Corporation, and he mangled an op-ed by HRC from last Thursday:
He may also have read these articles from TNR and WP
Here’s a contemporary one from TIME.
Obama was at least in the ballpark so this probably won’t be seen as a major gaffe. Note, however, that the profits were phantom, and the conditions that reduced the actual losses are quite unlikely to be repeated. Here’s the low-down:
Although some commentators have gushed that the HOLC saved more than a million homes, in reality nearly 200,000 of the homes (194,134 in all) later defaulted and were acquired by the HOLC, roughly half of these by early 1936. In addition, although the HOLC did ret urn money to the Treasury, the profit and expense numbers do not take account of a variety of factors, such as the facts that the HOLC had free use of the mails, that the bonds it supplied to lenders were tax exempt, and its that financial data did not include the borrowing cost of the initial $200 million that funded the program. . . . There are at least three reasons to doubt that we could expect anything like the success of the original HOLC. First, the HOLC was established at one of the bleakest moments in the Depression. Not only were roughly half of all mortgages in default, but the banking system was crippled. Hundreds of banks had failed. Indeed, according to the classic history of the HOLC, 121,391 of the loans were acquired from 6,316 closed banks that were under governmental control. Failed banks weren’t in a position to drive a hard bargain. One effect is that this enabled the HOLC to acquire troubled mortgages on very good terms. (The average HOLC mortgage, for instance, secured a repayment obligation that amounted to only 68.8% of the current value of the property– a equity cushion that surely could not be replicated in our own crisis). As bad as our current condition is, by contrast, relatively few lenders have failed, and the financial services industry clearly is strong enough to drive a hard bargain, both politically as Congress debates the enactment of legislation, and practically when it negotiates with the FHA after enactment over the term s of the mortgage reductions to be traded for FHA guarantees. Second, the HOLC seemed to have benefitted from very favorable interest rate conditions. The short term rates at which the HOLC itself borrowed were very low during the period when it purchased most of the mortgages (1933 to early 1936), while long term rates were higher. Although interest rates currently are low, we obviously do not know whether this will continue. Third, the HOLC benefitted from a strong rebound in property values after the depths of the Depression, both during World War II and when the GI’s returned to buy houses afterwards. The fact that the borrowers who did not default early on owned property that was significantly appreciating in value in the final decade and a half of the program surely contributed to the HOLC’s success. Perhaps U.S. property values will once again begin a steady march upward, but we cannot assume this. [bolding mine] I’d strongly suggest that you read the entire blog post.