If some foreclosures are sloppy and unfair, just ask the government to ban them all. That's essentially what some politicians and consumer groups have done by asking the Obama administration to demand and enforce a nationwide moratorium on foreclosures.

The late H. L. Mencken once noted there "is always an easy solution to every problem — neat, plausible, and wrong." That's a decent assessment of enthusiasm for an enforced nationwide moratorium on foreclosures as a solution to "robo-signing" — a practice in which employees for loan servicers have signed court affidavits in foreclosure filings without knowledge of what was in the documents.

These clerical assumptions of guilt are outrageous, so the desire for an easy solution is understandable. Fortunately, the Obama administration knows the cure could be worse than the disease. On Monday, Secretary of Housing Shawn Donovan said a blanket moratorium would do more harm than good, but promised the administration would respond to bad foreclosures with "the full force of the law."

Lending institutions, including GMAC and Bank of America, have instituted their own foreclosure moratoriums in the wake of scandals, which was an appropriate private-sector response. While most of these lapses in foreclosure procedure appear to be technical rather than miscarriages of justice, there have been instances of people facing unwarranted foreclosures. Such mistaken foreclosures need to be resolved, and the victims compensated.

However, White House top adviser David Axelrod acknowledged last week that "There are, in fact, valid foreclosures that probably should go forward." They most definitely should go forward, if the borrower has been given reasonable opportunities to catch up and the benefit of all protections of law. Each house kept off the market by artificial means, such as a foreclosure ban, is a house that someone else cannot buy with a responsible and affordable loan.

While some buyers facing foreclosure are sympathetic victims, others knew full well they were taking on loans they couldn't afford during the great credit flood that was precipitated by the Federal Reserve.

As Peter Wallison, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute explained, a moratorium would be "disastrously harmful." Wallison sees three dire consequences that would flow from a foreclosure moratorium.

Homes that could be resold would be kept off the market, and the process of finding the housing market's "bottom" — essential to restoring a market with realistic prices and the first step toward restoring the economy — would be halted. Stopping it would reverse a trend toward affordable housing for Americans who didn't fool themselves into buying overpriced homes during the easy-credit housing-bubble era.

Second, banks would be deprived of income that would facilitate loans to small businesses and new homebuyers. Third, taxpayers would "get hosed" as Fannie and Freddie continued to lose money, relying on more from taxpayers.

The Obama administration is right on the mark to resist a moratorium on foreclosures. The administration should stand its ground, while upholding its promise to protect abused borrowers with the full force of the law.

REPRINTED FROM THE COLORADO SPRINGS GAZETTE