The Nixon Playbook

Reuters reports:

President George W. Bush is expected to outline on Thursday a plan to freeze mortgage rates for five years for many U.S. homeowners facing sharp increases in their monthly payments, industry sources said on Wednesday.

Steve Green opines:

What the “sources” didn’t say is that loan-wary banks are going to become even warier, as their expected high-risk rewards vanish in a puff of unintended consequences. Now that’s how you tank an economy, you big giant dummy head. I haven’t seen a Republican pull an economic move this stupid since Nixon’s wage/price freeze back in ’72.

It’s not the first time that President Bush has dipped into the 37th president’s economic playbook, of course. Here’s a flashback to a post written in the first week of this blog’s existence, back in March of 2002.

And White House economic tinkering may only get worse in ’09.