Mortgage market participants are keenly aware that the Federal Reserve has been scaling back its UST and MBS purchases and factoring the outcomes of its actions on stakeholders across markets. In this Policy Perspectives article, we take a retrospective look back at the March 2020 ease from a mortgage markets view point and highlight how the outcomes of intervention manifest through the interaction of related primary and secondary mortgage markets activities. We show that Fed activity can have unintended and disruptive impacts on the functioning of housing finance and result in wealth effects that benefit the more affluent segments of the housing economy.

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