Key to Recovery: Fix Housing, and Jobs Will Follow

In the conventional wisdom, there is nothing President Obama can do to put Americans back to work in large numbers. He is a president supposedly held hostage by vengeful politics, holed up in a White House surrounded by lunatics and impotent hacks, with congressional combat rendering meaningful action impossible.

Nonsense. There is one thing the president can do right now, and largely by himself, if he finds the courage to command people working under him -- not least Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner: He can help fix the distress in the housing market, which was the immediate trigger for the Great Recession, and which continues to play a major in preventing recovery.