$3 trillion could be injected into the U.S. economy without any federal spending by tweaking this corner of the mortgage market, 'Oracle of Wall Street' says

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While she has recently warned of the dangers that the “crisis of the American male” poses to the economy and the housing market, the CEO of Meredith Whitney Advisory Group highlighted the opportunity that a proposed reform to the mortgage market could represent.
In a column for the Financial Times on Friday, she noted that mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac asked its regulator last month to enter the secondary mortgage market, or home equity loans, which allow homeowners to borrow against the equity in their houses.
Letting Freddie Mac do this for home equity loans could start putting $1 trillion into consumers’ wallets as soon as this summer and $2 trillion by the autumn, Whitney estimated.
Still, Whitney said expanding the ability to tap home equity loans would provide “big stimulus to an economy and consumer that appear to be slowing down without adding a dime to government debt.