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More than $100 billion of taxpayer money has been pumped into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to keep them on an even keel. And the Federal Reserve Board obligingly kept short-term interest rates low and bought enormous amounts of mortgage-backed securities, driving down long-term yields and enabling a refi boom that kept the business alive for four or five years. Though the term was coined for big financial institutions rather than industries, in some respects the mortgage business was marked as Too Big to Fail.

Unlimited taxpayer propping-up for the government-sponsored enterprises in the future is at least an open question. The Senate Banking Committee has passed a marked up Johnson-Crapo bill, and the full Senate will now consider reform that would make private entities liable for the first losses, in effect assigning them a 10% deductible. Even if it doesn't pass the Senate, it's the first significant step towards resolving the GSEs in many years.

And, the Fed has begun to taper off its buying down of the mortgage markets. Interest rates have gone up, though not as sharply as many had feared (and in recent weeks they've retraced some of those gains). But the rate rise has been significant enough that refinancings have tanked and the purchase market has not been able to take up the slack. And the cost of regulatory compliance is tracking north rapidly. (Read complete article.)