All this talk about reforming banks, creating green jobs and reviving the credit markets gives me a warm feeling about us rolling up our collective American sleeves and doing...something.  

But how will we know it's working? Lately, we've all been checking the Dow Jones Industrial Average, to see whether the people who got us into this mess in the first place approve of the proposed solutions. And that's just weird. But what to do?

I have a hunch that a crucial measurement should be in the arena of housing, where all this began. And it shouldn't be in housing sales, because unless the number of foreclosures drops, sales will just represent a downward spiral of forced bargain-basement selling. (A cellar of sellers, so to speak.) In fact, maybe the measurement should be of number of homeowners saved from foreclosure or numbers of upside-down loans stabilized--numbers which are shockingly low even after months of discussing the issue.

I was struck by the lukewarm response to Bertha Lewis' post on ACORN's activities to stop foreclosures.  As CEO of ACORN, Ms Lewis is surely the Warren Buffet of poor people.

I'm a little uncomfortable with direct action tactics myself, and I could take issue with ACORN's representation of the foreclosed as hapless victims of the man--which I think has unintentionally contributed to the misunderstanding that the foreclosed are either inept or malicious. But who's going to quibble about whether the person who issued the hurricane warning ought to have worn a red suit or a blue one: ACORN saw this problem coming a mile away and has consistently been on the homeowners' side with a view toward fixing it.

I'm glad to see ACORN and others seemingly scrap the "workout options" presented by the banks, which are proving ineffective, in favor of a more radical approach. It would be interesting to hear more from Ms. Lewis about whether that's what ACORN is doing, and to know whether it's possible to build a consensus around that more radical approach. Testing here at TPM would be useful.

In any case, a critical measurement for how we are doing will be how many homeowners (and perhaps even how many rental property owners!) are made whole and able to provide stable housing for ordinary people once again.

I'm pretty sure it's a number that none of the big players have dared to look at yet. It's up to all of us to demand that they do so, because our future depends on it.