Mortgage spreads, save for later.
What the banks lose in higher mortgage spreads, they make up by having a guaranteed purchaser, plus the Fed is paying handsomely to park funds overnight - another windfall of free GSE money.
“Obama/Dems seize the mortgage market and spreads rise. What a shock!!!!”
Good point except that Fannie and Freddie were seized during the Bush administration.
The reason that we had near zero rates prior to 2008 was do to the shadow banking sector’s financial engineering that was fueling the housing bubble. When the bubble blew the fools that were providing that financing blew up with it.
Where do people get the idea that such low rates are healthy in the first place? It largely means that savings are being treated like trash.