While it was gratifying to watch Senator McSame

push for the adoption of a fragment of the Driftglass Proposal for National Economic Recovery,

(The McSame Plan from last night…)

… we're going to have to do something about home values.

You know that home values of retirees continues to decline and people are no longer able to afford their mortgage payments. As president of the United States, Alan, I would order the secretary of the treasury to immediately buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes -- at the diminished value of those homes and let people be able to make those -- be able to make those payments and stay in their homes.

Is it expensive? Yes. But we all know, my friends, until we stabilize home values in America, we're never going to start turning around and creating jobs and fixing our economy. And we've got to give some trust and confidence back to America.

I know how the do that, my friends. And it's my proposal, it's not Sen. Obama's proposal, it's not President Bush's proposal.

(The driftglass Plan from last week…)

…
For every single dollar proposed by the federal government to backstop failing Wall Street plutocrats, three dollars must go into a Federal Refinancing Authority (FRA).

Any homeowner in the “Shaky” category with a single residence who has taken out a mortgage in the last ten years and is willing to promise (within reason) to hold onto and live in that property for the next five years can apply to refinance down to the Analyzed Market Value.

The FRA will pick up half the cost of the reduction and the lender will eat the other half. Homeowners will see the value of their property drop, but not to an unreasonable level. Lending institutions will take a small but sustainable hit. And taxpayers will shoulder a fraction of the burden they would otherwise have to.

The FRA will come with a sunset provision and will disappear two years from inception.
…

-- I would offer three suggestions.

First you can’t just eat the goo out of the middle of the Oreo and leave the crappy cookie for your houseboy to sweep up, Senator; before you can suggest that I-the-taxpayer buy up several hundred billion dollars of dubious paper, you need to arrive at some rational, commonly accepted template for assigning value to that paper,

Then triage the results into Healthy, Salvageable and Glue Factor.

Then you have to explain how you will filter irresponsible, system-gaming speculators out of the market while keeping responsible homeowners in the market.

Yeesh.

Second, look up the word “embed” and the phrase “conceptual framework” and don’t bother calling me until you understand what they mean.

Third, since you are “aware of Internet and its traditions”, you should know it is customary to “hat tip” the site from which you “borrow” an idea, a bit of writing or a graphic at the last minute so you can go on national teevee and pretend you have some rudimentary understanding of the worst economic problem America has faced since, well, since before you were born, and some kind of plan to get us the hell out of it.