It’s not about Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie—at least not this time. It’s maybe more along the lines of that other great duo’s (Emerson’s and Thoreau’s) credo, the “return to simplicity” movement. Only this time it’s simplicity and mortgage-backed securities. Historically, those were not two things that one would have put together in the same phrase. But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Over the past two years, the nation has faced what has been described as the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression. Subprime mortgages originated and then sold in “securitization” vehicles in the secondary market have been blamed as being one of, or the principal, cause of the problem. Maybe that’s enough to have shocked some into advocating in favor of “plain vanilla” and simple structures. On June 17th, the Obama Administration released its white paper, titled “Financial Regulatory Reform: A New Foundation,” which proposes fundamental reforms to the financial regulatory system, including reforms that would affect the regulation of mortgages and the secondary mortgage market. The mortgage-related reforms include....

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