A housing renaissance has begun. This may be hard to believe after the dizzying, six-year-long crash in home sales, construction and house prices. But housing turned the corner last year, and it will take off in 2013.

The FHA's success provides strong evidence that government can and should play a role in the nation's mortgage finance system. It also demonstrates that although government intervention in the economy during the Great Recession was messy, things would have been a lot messier without it.

It has become fashionable to rail against government intervention in the economy, and the FHA is a favorite example by those trying to show the government's overreach. In reality, the FHA shows how government action during the Great Recession forestalled a much worse economic fate.

They called me the sexiest economist in America, and that was years ago, when I had hair and body mass and my teeth were shiny.

There is plenty of blame to go around for the U.S. housing bubble, but not much of it belongs to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two giant housing-finance institutions made many mistakes over the decades, some of them real whoppers, but causing house prices to soar and then crater during the past decade weren't among them.

A housing renaissance has begun. This may be hard to believe after the dizzying, six-year-long crash in home sales, construction and house prices. But housing turned the corner last year, and it will take off in 2013.

The average credit score of today's FHA borrowers is higher than the average American household with a score. As it becomes more costly and difficult to get a FHA loan, loans from private mortgage lenders will become more attractive and their market share will grow.