Afternoon Must-Read: Zach Goldfarb (2012): The Obama Administration and Mortgage Debt

Zach Goldfarb (2012): Economists, Obama administration at odds over role of mortgage debt in recovery: “”One year and one month before President Obama won reelection…

…he invited seven of the world’s top economists to a private meeting in the Oval Office to hear their advice on what do to fix the ailing economy…. Nearly all said Obama should introduce a much bigger plan to forgive part of the mortgage debt owed by millions of homeowners who are underwater on their properties….

Obama was reserved in response, but Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner interjected that he didn’t think anything of such ambition was possible. “How do we get this done through Congress?” he asked. “What could we actually do that we haven’t done?”

Fits awkwardly with the sentence in Tim Geithner’s memoirs about how he wishes the administration had done more. What, exactly? Suppose that Geithner had persuaded Obama to nominate a Glenn Hubbard capable of building bipartisan congressional coalitions to run the FHFA and thus mortgage refinancing in January 2009. What more does Geithner now wish had been done?