Any governor who has threatened to reject any stimulus money, particularly extended unemployment benefits, should be forced to go visit these encampments.
Now what can we do to prevent these settlements from exploding in size? Creating jobs is the obvious first step. Hopefully, the stimulus and the benefits aimed at the most at risk within society will help. But we also need debt reduction for insolvent households, primarily by writing down the face value of mortgages to reflect current prices. With so many borrowers underwater on their mortgage - and many more likely to find themselves there over the next few years, as housing prices most likely still have 20-30% to fall - there will be a terrible incentive to do jingle mail, and simply walk away. This will cause housing prices to overshoot on the downside. Reducing mortgage debt will not only mitigate foreclosures, but boost aggregate demand. Nouriel Roubini has long called for a reincarnation of the HOLC of the Great Depression to buy up mortgages, in order to refinance/renegotiate the terms. Roubini elaborated on this point on CNBC yesterday.
Why can't we find a job in the Treasury department for Roubini? And Krugman, Stiglitz, Shiller, and Simon Johnson as well, for that matter?
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