mortgage utility?

Soon to be former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in a speech proposed replacing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with something like a mortgage utility. Something heavily regulated, there to raise money from investors by bundling mortgages that would have formal US government backing. Unlike Fannie and Freddie, Paulson said such an entity would NOT hold investment portfolios.

It would be doing mundane, workaday sort of financial services, more for the benefit of the housing and mortgage sectors than in a quest for ever higher profits.

It doesn't sound like a bad idea.