Mortgage Pipeline

See: Mortgage.

Is it a crowded field? An empty one? How many mortgages are coming? How big is the pipeline trickling down from The Fed into the hands of the loan "retailers," like banks?

That's what the pipeline is. Sometimes it's driven by massive demand, like when debt prices are cheap and Joe Sixpack wants to buy a home desperately. Other times, The Fed is pushing money at borrowers, lowering rates, making supply easy to get.

Pundits inspect the volume of both supply and demand for mortgages and assess the vicissitude of that pipeline, opining on the quality of the economy at any given moment. All part of the American Dream Dance.