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THE HOUSING MARKET…..Barack Obama talks to the New York Times:

He said that he intended to propose a broad overhaul of financial regulation by April, and that he was working with Congressional leaders on his promised plan to limit foreclosures in the wake of the mortgage crisis.

“We’ve got to prevent the continuing deterioration of the housing market,” he said.

But that’s not true. Housing prices are still well above where they ought to be. Unfortunately, they need to deteriorate some more.

This is the big problem with efforts to rescue homeowners rather than banks. It makes sense that if banks have lots of assets that are toxic because they’re based on uncertain house values, then rather than bailing out the banks directly we should just do something to make house prices more certain. Mortgage-backed assets would become easier to value, bank balance sheets would firm up, credit markets would start to ease, and distressed homeowners would get relief in the process. It’s a win-win.

Except for one thing: we don’t want to prop up housing prices at their current unsustainable levels, and we probably couldn’t do it even if we wanted to. Rather, we need to find ways to help out homeowners even though prices are going to continue to deteriorate for a while. That’s pretty tricky, though, since anything you do to rescue homeowners also has a tendency to keep house prices propped up.

Still, some things are better than others. Programs that motivate lenders to reach workout agreements with owners who are underwater probably have the biggest bang for the buck, and hopefully that’s the kind of thing Obama has in mind. But whatever it is, it better not be something that tries to hold back the tide of falling house prices. It didn’t work for King Canute and it won’t work for President Obama either.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

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