FDR Solves the Mortgage Crisis

By Andrew Jakabovics | September 14, 2007

"Here should be an objective of Government itself, to provide at least as much assistance to the little fellow as it is now giving to the large banks and corporations."--Franklin D. Roosevelt, April 7, 1932

The burgeoning home-mortgage crisis of 2007 bears an eerie resemblance to financial conditions 75 years ago, when FDR realized that only the U.S. government could forestall a wave of home foreclosures by directly helping "the little fellow." Today, homeowners can only hope that something akin to Roosevelt's New Deal answer to the home-loan crisis of the 1930s--direct lending to homeowners--is embraced by policymakers once again.

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This article was originally published in The New Republic.