Obama's rescue plan [UPDATED]Obama today rolls out another set of proposals for dealing with the economic crisis, one focused more on the human consequences of the crisis.
The plan includes helping out states and localities, allowing people to cash out part of their retirement savings without tax penalties, and an arrangement with banks that would include a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures for many homeowners.
The plan is a striking sign of how far this crisis has moved, and a sign that Obama has shifted toward a more populist approach.
In February, after Hillary Clinton proposed a similar foreclosure moratorium, the Los Angeles Times reported that Obama condemned her plan:
In San Antonio on Tuesday, Obama said that Clinton?s foreclosure freeze
was potentially ?disastrous,? rewarding ?people who made this problem worse? by benefiting banks that profit from high mortgage rates.UPDATE: Obama's aides say that though he called her plan, on the whole, "disastrous," his objection wasn't to the foreclosure moratorium but to an interest rate freeze she had proposed, and which isn't part of Obama's plan.
The full transcript is here, and makes clear that the passage I linked above isn't quite clear: He's attacking Clinton's proposal "that we freeze the monthly rate on existing adjustable rate mortgages for at least five years."
He had nothing positive to say, however, about her foreclosure moratorium, and did condemn the plan.
ALSO: Obama's foreclosure moratorium would not, unlike Clinton's, be imposed unilaterally; it would be a condition of participation in the $700 million bailout. So -- unlike Clinton's plan -- it's, in a sense, it's a matter of reciprocity between the banks and the government, a cost to the banks of the infusion of money.
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