As Congress and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) debate the severity of restrictions to place on greedy lenders and Wall Street “securitizers” to ensure that they can never again jeopardize the global financial system while forcing droves of decent American families into homeless shelters, we would all do well to take a step back and consider where the U.S. housing finance system has been and where it is headed.

We may well conclude that, like a wilderness plane crash survivor trekking for days without a compass, we are likely to end up right where we started.