If you’ve been following along with this blog for a while, then you probably now know that QE3 from the Fed helped keep interest rates down at least through 2014, and probably for three quarters thereafter. Also, you know that the Fed rate hike last year was unlikely to have any impact on long-term mortgage rates. Still, there are things the Fed can do about rates, and the world is full of uncertainty. Thankfully, at the January FOMC meeting, they gave us perhaps the most clear wording the Fed has ever produced  “The Committee is … reinvesting principal payments from its holdings of … mortgage-backed securities … and it anticipates doing so until normalization of the level of the federal funds rate is well under way. This policy … should help maintain accommodative financial conditions.”