The NYT reports on hostility to programs to intervene in the foreclosure crisis and focuses exclusively on many people's hostility to helping homeowners to get in over their heads. It never discusses hostility to the banks who now hold bad mortgages, who will be the primary beneficiaries of these measures. It also relies on Nicolas P. Retsinas, the director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, as one of its main sources. Mr. Retsinas is perhaps best known for dismissing the possibility that there was a housing bubble and encouraging low and moderate income people to buy homes even when they were at bubble inflated prices (discussed here).
--Dean Baker
