Read Hillary Clinton on HOLC:

[H]ere's what I believe we should do.

First, in light of historic bank failures, even with the largest federal intervention in the history of the mortgage market, we need a government entity, a modern-day Homeowners Loan Corporation, referred to as HOLC -- H-O-L-C -- or we need to build on the Resolution Trust Corporation created to help deal with the Savings and Loan Crisis.

Now, I personally believe and was among the very first to suggest that a HOLC, a Homeowners Loan Corporation, could be a preferable way of unfreezing and beginning to fix our struggling mortgage market. Some of my colleagues and many other respected economists and government officials have called for the creation of an entity like the Resolution Trust Corporation, which was created after the Savings and Loan crisis to liquidate in an orderly way the virtually worthless assets that the failed S&L’s held.

Just yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, Paul Volker, and Eugene Ludwig and Nicholas Brady made such a proposal. They said a HOLC, an RTC, we’ve got to come up with an entity that will assume these debts and burdens and begin to work our way out. Last spring when I called for a modern version of the HOLC, that’s the Depression-era entity that bought up old mortgages and issued new, more affordable ones in their stead, most people did not pay much attention. But I think it's important to note that by the time the HOLC closed its books, that agency had turned a small profit and helped over a million people keep their homes. And this was 70 years ago. Our population has grown dramatically. So, obviously, if we did it right, we would be able to save a lot of homes. And I think if it is administered correctly it could be actually a net expenditure or even winner for the federal government.

Now, with the FHA reforms that I have long championed adopted this summer in our Omnibus Housing Bill, the FHA could be already a modern Homeownership Lender Corporation. But we need to look to new ways to revive and if necessary create a new market for mortgage securities based on sound accounting, transparent recordkeeping and responsible lending.

A new government entity like the HOLC with a focus on attacking the source of the problem can serve the purpose of clearing a lot of those toxic mortgage securities from the market. We know there will not be any semblance of a normal or orderly marketplace until we have found a way to resolve these mortgage securities that are metastasizing in the bottom of our markets. By taking this paper out of the market and quarantining it in this new entity we will be able to give the market breathing room to recover. We will also be able to set the stage for an orderly sale of these securities and in turn allow some of them to recover and actually regain some of their value. Perhaps just as importantly, not only would our financial markets stabilize but so would our housing markets.

This is an extraordinary measure but it is not without precedent. This is the greatest market upheaval since the Great Depression. We are, indeed, in a crisis, and in times of crisis there are opportunities for leadership. Congress could show the American people that leadership working with the President by embracing this bold proposal.

All Democrats show show bold leadership as Hillary Clinton has done. The time for HOLC is now. Democrats, including Barack Obama, should promise the American People relief for Main Street. They should promise the reinstitution of HOLC as the first measure of a President Obama and a Democratic Congress.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only