It’s been 2.5 years since the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced they were joining forces to begin compiling a National Mortgage Database, and the project continues to spook some in the industry. Several news reports over the past week have billed the initiative as part of the Obama administration’s “secret race database,” based on a report last week by Paul Sperry, a fellow at the Hoover Center. The Federal Housing Finance Agency continues to defend the project as a tool to help regulators ward off future mortgage crises. The NMD will be...