Mass refi: Catch the fever!
(Chart: New York Federal Reserve)
Allan Sloan joins the movement. And over at the New York Fed, Joseph Tracy and Joshua Wright make quick work of the argument that the benefits of lowering payments for households are fully offset by the drawbacks of reducing payments to investors — as they note, and as you can see on the chart above, 47 percent of mortgage-backed securities are owned either by foreign investors or the federal government. Remember, this is that rare economic policy Obama could pass on his own.
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