Principal Reduction and Strategic Default

Moral hazard, moral hazard, moral hazard....  How often have we heard that as a reason for why principal reductions can't be done.  As if it were the worst thing in the world.  

As an initial matter, we don't have to do principal reduction in a way that creates moral hazard, such as making principal reduction contingent on default and no strings attached. (To put it another way, we don't have to be stupid about the way we do principal reduction.) One solution would be principal reductions contingent on level of negative equity, not on default. Another would be to offer principal reductions only to those who have already defaulted (I don't like this because it penalizes those who kept paying, but the point is that it avoids moral hazard inducement). Another possibility would be to make principal reductions contingent upon paymentshared appreciation, which doesn't have to be a 50-50 split. Instead, it could be that initial appreciation goes all to the lender and then it starts to shift to the borrower. 

But let me suggest something counterintuitive and heterodox. Principal reduction is a case in which we WANT to encourage moral hazard. To understand why, you need to start with the understanding that our goal here is macroeconomic, not moral. The goal is stabilizing the housing market and the the economy, not balancing the moral cosmos and bringing harmony to the Force (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Making principal reduction contingent upon default means that there will be a bunch of people who default just to get the principal reduction. That's a "ruthless" group of people who are quite likely to be strategic defaulters otherwise. They are precisely the people who need to get principal reductions to incentivize them to stay in their homes in order to stabilize the market. We might not like rewarding people who would act opportunistically like this, but if you accept the issue as macroeconomic, not moral, then the results are what matter:  fewer foreclosures and a stabilized housing market.