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When the fha or hope for homeowner programs, they would help the subprime borrowers. now we have a problem with negative equity and unemployment and the programs have been rolled out and we are behind the problem. we have never been in front of the problem. the other bucket is the players. we have government, banks, not-for-profits, all the groups who are trying as hard as they can, but they are not coordinated. they too are want in front of the problem and they all have their own agenda. in have incentives to perpetuate this problem because there are jobs depending on this problem. >> for hom...

Problem. this doesn't exclude the government from going after these same banks again. it's not like a legal settlement where you say, look i'm not going to admit guilt or in sense but i'll pay you x amount of dollars and make this go away. what this did is it's 25 billion now, we may hit you later. the banks are saying i'm not sure what we have going on here. again, it's just prolonging the inevitable. bill: you want a number, eric? u.s. homeowners are up $750 billion in negative equity. what is 25 billion going to do to that? >> reporter: that means the u.s. homeowners owe more on their house...

I think it's limited to fha mortgages. that will be about one million in theory. if this one spends the money as slowly as the other three or four have it won't be much help to very many people. megyn: isn't this just going to punt the problem down the road? if i'm underwater on my mortgage and the government allows me to refinance, and i sell the house it's not like the government has changed my negative equity. the bank is going to wind up covering that when i sell my house or i'm going to find some really stupid buyer who pays way more than the house is worth. >> i don't think there are tha...

Particular to rectify the underwater situation so to try to give -- make people even on their underwater mortgages. so somebody like me who i will admit i bought a house which was above what i really should have been buying that they would now erase that negative equity and say, kelly it's like it never happened. you are all good on your equity, that's rather controversial for them to do that for millions of homeowners. >> no, see it doesn't make sense. here is what makes sense. you know how to get the houses out from underwater, get the economy moving again, get people to afford houses. there...

Tricks. so no one really wants to take on big banks in washington, and that means nobody's really serious about tackling the problem. that's why this plan deals with refinancing rather than negative equity, people being underwater. >> right. it makes total sense. and you agree with that assessment, i presume? >> yes. we extorted the financial accounting standard board to change the rules so that the banks wouldn't have to recognize the losses, unless and until they actually sold the place. so they're sitting on this shadow inventory of millions of homes and the markets simply don't clear. mill...