Ripple-Free Mortgage Markets

The Fed and Interest Rates

If you follow markets -- stocks, housing, you name it -- two things catch your attention: too volatile, and too calm.

The former is usually associated with rapidly changing, "macro" events that the markets are struggling to make sense of; the latter, somebody's got their "hand on the scale" (at an extreme, you get government wage and price controls).

So, how do you explain the almost ripple-free calm in the mortgage markets that last six weeks or so?

The Fed has clearly targeted a 30-year rate in the low 5's, and has been spending hundreds of billions to keep it there . .