[pridkett]

For the most part in the United States when people talk about mortgages and mortgage rate, they’re talking about the 30yr fixed rate mortgage. The United States government does a lot to prop up home ownership buy purchasing a lot of these loans so banks don’t keep them on the balance sheet. This is primarily done through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - both of which are government sponsored publicly traded organizations. They each have trillions of dollars of dollars under management ($4.23 and $3.03 trillion respectively).

In 2008 these companies were “too big to fail”, which I think might’ve contributed to some sort of a short term economic hiccup. /s