Please welcome our newest members: HARP and HAMP

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I’m starting to report a story about how the Obama Administration’s plans to save the housing market are playing out (if you have any inside information on that, let me know). One of the first things I’ve figured out is that I’ve failed to keep you up-to-date on our government’s generation of funny crisis-related acronyms. For a while there, it seemed we were getting a new one every day, but then came the super-serious Financial Stability Plan. That seemed to put an end to the fun.

But no! The official name for the Obama housing plan is the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan—HASP. That’s kind of good. What I didn’t realize until just recently, though, is that in conversation one doesn’t refer to the two parts of HASP as the refi plan and the loan modification plan, as I’d been naively doing. Instead, one refers to the two prongs as HARP and HAMP. As is, the Home Affordable Refinance Plan (HARP) and the Home Affordable Modification Plan (HAMP). There has got to be a country western song someone can write from that.

UPDATE: Oh my gosh, it’s even better than I thought. Today someone used the terms HAM and HAR with me.

Barbara!