Unless events change dramatically, Bush is likely to be remembered for three things:

• 9/11. Not stopping the 9/11 attacks after receiving an August 2001 briefing warning of such attacks;
• Iraq. A preemptive war without end in Iraq to protect the U.S. against non-existent "weapons of mass destruction"; and
• Housing meltdown. one of the worst real estate-led financial collapses in U.S. history.

The gap between reality and that Mission Accomplished banner does not inspire confidence that Bush will succeed in stopping the third part of this legacy. In 2002, Bush made home ownership an important goal. In achieving this goal, he was helped by

• Cheap money. The Fed cut interest rates to as low as 1% in 2003;
• Mortgages for people with bad credit. Subprime mortgages -- 47% of which were made without documenting buyers' incomes -- grew rapidly from 9% of newly originated securitized mortgages in 2001 to 40% in 2006;
• Bundling and selling mortgages as securities. Securitization that took the loans off the books of the mortgage originators. These mortgages were packaged into mortgage backed securities (MBSs) at a rapid rate -- more than quadrupling -- from $95 billion in 2001 to $450 billion in 2006;
• Paying off ratings agencies. Ratings agencies which competed for fees based on giving those securities AAA ratings; and
• Investors seeking higher yields at lower risk. Hedge funds, pension funds, money market funds, and other institutional investors which bought the securities because they thought they would offer higher yields at acceptable risk levels.

Paulson has already tried to deal with the problem of Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs) -- the $320 billion business of lending a bank's high credit rating to an off balance-sheet entity that issues short-term commercial paper and uses the proceeds to buy subprime MBSs. His Super SIV plan has yet to produce results. And at least one bank has decided to go it alone.

So it is perhaps premature to credit the Bush administration's announcement that it's negotiating with banks to limit mortgage resets for last week's market up-spurts. I don't know if there are enough details to evaluate the plan, but if the mortgage resets were baked into the value of the MBSs then the investors who bought them are going to take a bigger-than-anticipated hit. On the plus side, the plan could help some borrowers delay the inevitable -- foreclosure.

Will the Bush Put halt the damage to his economic legacy or will it go the way of the Mission Accomplished banner -- as a symbol of declaring victory too soon in a war against a natural market correction?

It's too early to tell.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter.