It was the now-senior Democrat senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, who faulted the Fed for enabling the financial crisis that prompted such an unconventional accommodative response in the first place.

One last thought on Berkowitz and Fairholme: To get Congress to listen to your ideas you have to donate money. Berkowitz can check that box off his to-do list. He has been a generous donor to Republicans and Democrats alike over the past two election cycles.

The focus on purchase mortgages became urgent as interest rates started to increase in May, settling for the moment about 100 basis points higher than they were in April, reducing demand for refinances.

At Sept. 30, Freedom Mortgage serviced $28.69 billion of home mortgages, an impressive 75 percent jump from the same period a year earlier.

Impac Mortgage originated $576.2 million of home loans in 3Q, a 26 percent sequential decline.

Fairholme owns $3.5 billion (face value) of GSE junior preferred stock. After company chief Bruce Berkowitz sent his tender offer to FHFA and then went on CNBC to discuss the plan, you can bet that the price of GSE preferred probably increased a bit.

The last time private MIs did more business than either the FHA or the VA was back in the first quarter of 2008. At that point, however, private MIs accounted for well over half of primary MI new business.

On Thursday morning, Fairholme chief Bruce Berkowitz said, "We’re talking to everyone about this plan,” then added: “We’d love to talk to Treasury.”

The STACR deal was structured so that Freddie Mac will take the first 30 basis points of losses on the transaction, followed by private investors, which bought debt notes on the following 300 basis points of potential losses.

The CFPB expects the vast majority of institutions to be in substantial compliance with its new mortgage rules by the January deadlines.