This excerpt originally appeared in National Public Radio on April 11, 2012.

Some experts just don't like the unfair, free-lunch aspect of principal write-downs. For them, forgiving principal outright seems to cross a bright line and raise all manner of fairness and moral hazard concerns.

Anthony Sanders, a professor of real estate finance at George Mason University, says this would be a "major shift in economic policy" and that there would be unintended consequences.

"Do we really want to go out on the hairy edge, based on a few anecdotal assumptions that this might work?" Sanders asks. "I would argue no."