You're seeing inventories creeping up and affordability pinching more and more, and you're seeing long-term rates creeping up. All that suggests a trimming of housing activity.

These numbers give the Fed license to cut rates as much as necessary.

I think this is an important first step for the central bank. They didn't want to lower rates too aggressively for fear of sending a signal to the markets that they thought things were completely falling apart.

Now, with the economic recovery appearing to be somewhat in place and the central bank not lowering rates, we see people trying to get in at the gates before rates start to rise.

Moving by just [a quarter percentage point] or perhaps leaving rates unchanged has been made a lot more palatable by the events that have transpired in the past 24 hours.

In the short run, it's a no-win situation for the administration. But longer term, it's a win-win situation because you keep financial flows going, and economic growth will become a lot firmer.