If this had been put forth three years ago, I'd have even gotten behind assisted buy-downs on principal owed for underwater properties so the market would be freed up in the wake of the bubble bursting.
It likely would have cost less than the tens of trillions tossed down the black hole of the financial industry, and would have gone a long way toward mitigating the effects of the financial crisis.
Too late for that now, a principal buy-down, but a rate buy-down will actually help people and free up a little discretionary spending each month to offset the strange combination of deflation in assets and inflation in food and fuel.
The downside is the same as the upside, though. This puts the stimulus into the broader economy, and there has been one heck of a lot of it, so the risk of igniting genuine inflation and having it take root is real.
CRA jobs are still available at the FDIC.
That kind of meddling has to have adverse effects.