MEGAN MCARDLE: “How easy it is to address foreclosures, however, depends on what the reason is for the foreclosure. Are people missing payments because changed circumstances mean that they can’t afford them, or are people missing payments because they don’t want to make payments on a house that was worth $500,000 when they bought it, but is now worth $300,000? . . . Is the government going to guarantee approximately 70 million owner-occupied homes in America against a 25% price drop? No, because that’s $3.5 trillion dollars, if my mental arithmetic serves. Or is it only going to give the money to the least responsible homeowners: the ones with small (or no) downpayments, houses they could only afford at short-term teaser rates, and a long string of missed payments? The numbers, and the political arithmetic, don’t add up. Indeed, any such program would positively encourage people to default, in order to get the government to cram down their loans.”