Martin Feldstein has been pushing a mortgage bailout proposal that has been getting some undeserved attention (see here and here, e.g.).  Feldstein gets  (here, and here)
how central negative equity is to the economic crisis.  Homeowners with
negative equity have a reduced incentive to stay in their home if the
mortgage is burdensome.  Negative equity fuels foreclosures, which in
turn force down housing prices, setting off a downward spiral.
Feldstein is right to focus on negative equity as a key issue for
housing market stabilization. The problem is in his solution–it is based on a few erroneous factual premises, all of which could have been discovered with very limited Google searches. 

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