...Stan Ross, who chairs the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California, isn't sure if Treasury's plan is necessarily an improvement over what was already in place. He thinks the government will eventually end up guaranteeing at least some of the losses incurred by buyers and sellers of banks' toxic assets. But Ross concedes that the new plan has "critical components" that address bank capitalization and consumer lending. "This frees up capital, the banks will survive, they get new capital, they make loans to companies, and the companies invest in capital improvements," leading to more jobs created. On the foreclosure front, Ross may not be a fan of reducing a mortgage's principal, but he does think the plan could minimize foreclosures in other ways, such as interest-rate buydowns and deferred payments...
February 11, 2009