There is an emerging consensus that the GSEs need to be reformed, and the Marron-Swagel proposal released by Economics 21 has drawn attention as a serious, politically realistic approach. As Felix Salmon has argued, Fannie Mae has refused to make reasonable accommodations for homeowners, in the process exacerbating spirals of neighborhood decline. And now they intend to take aggressive action against strategic defaulters, all without offering serious mortgage modification.

On a tangential note, Casey Mulligan is suggesting that the new home buyer tax credit — which I’ve denounced on more than one occasion — may have been a complete waste of taxpayer dollars.

Regardless of whether the price impact was $400 or $4000, the fact is that housing prices and construction activity stopped falling a year ago, and it is a wild exaggeration to claim that the pattern would have been much different without the new home buyer tax credit.

For those of us who would have opposed the tax credit even if it had worked as advertised, this is galling.