La vie en foreclose

That's right, not through pink glasses (i.e. rose). Randy Wray, Charles Whalen and Stephen Roach, all in the same page, asking for debt relief as essential for recovery, since most consumers are still de-leveraging from the housing bubble.

Both Keynes and Irving Fisher suggested that debt-deflation was at the heart of the Great Depression, and in that case debt relief for households should be at the center of the recovery. In the 1930s, the New Deal did provide a lot of debt relief for farmers, on top of trying to raise the prices of agricultural commodities (in order to help famers). Now more is needed in the housing front. The figure below shows how much the debt of the non-financial sector has fallen since the beginning of the crisis.

From the peak in 2008, it has fallen around US$ 700 billions. It's likely to continue. The problem is that consumer spending was tied to the ability to obtain credit, i.e. of getting indebted. And mortgages were central for consumers.