Fannie Mae-style agency to help banks free up cash

Don’t you love it when you go out of town and come back to find the policy you recommended is already on the table?

Uma Thurman said something along these lines in Pulp Fiction, only it was about going to the bathroom and returning to find the waiter has already delivered your burger.

But the same thing can and does happen with government economic policy. Regular readers of this column will recall that amid the usual rants that, with all but a few disruptions, regularly occupy this space, this columnist has been calling for some kind of agency that would buy loans from local banks to help them free up cash that they can start lending out again.