Obama's Housing Plan: Meh

Tyler Cowen pulls apart the proposal like a boy plucking off fly wings:

It will in the short run prevent some (enough to matter?) foreclosures.  But it won't keep up the long-term price of homes or prevent eventual foreclosures when the home has negative equity.

Many liberals think that the plan is too small. Many conservatives and libertarians think it will prove wasteful, ultimately ineffective, and that we shouldn't be trying to prop up housing values anyway. And this is surely the fear behind the gist of what Obama has done so far: it avoids the brutal re-balancing of the right while lacking the full metal Krugmanism of the left. Maybe this is a pragmatic sweet spot. Or maybe it's falling into some kind of ghastly, protracted abyss. I do not pretend to know.