The latter was to ensure that strikers with homes could face repossession, but was not to be officially acknowledged as part of any anti-strike plan.
Bankruptcies have shot up, and banks remain frustrated by a sluggish legal process that has left them sitting on hundreds of thousands of repossession lawsuits.
Mr Cagan marries the statistics and concludes that going by today's prices some 1.1m mortgages (or 13% of all adjustable-rate mortgages originated between 2004 and 2006), worth $326 billion, are heading for repossession in the next few years.
It has coped well with the recession, with an unemployment rate two points below the national average and one of the lowest rates of housing repossession.
Tying the process of repossession in yet more knots will make it harder for the market to clear and for house prices to find a floor.
Unless repossession forces a sale, homeowners prefer to sit tight when markets are weak.
As a lawyer involved in aircraft purchasing and repossession, he has seen aircraft ownership become divorced from airlines.
This is still lower than the industry average of 1.1%, but it is rising four times as quickly.More worrying still, Northern Rock's repossession of homes is three times the average, and its losses on loans (as a portion of the total) more than doubled last year to 0.26%.
But by and large, banks have been waiting for a right of repossession before plunging into the market.
In the event of repossession, the lender is expected to provide a rented flat for a year.
Around 2.5m homes are in the process of repossession, and 11m (or nearly 25% of all homes with mortgages) are "underwater": borrowers owe more on their mortgage than their houses are worth.
