The recent discord over the nation’s debt ceiling highlighted the fragile macroeconomic backdrop in which the Federal Reserve’s second round of quantitative easing came to its end. And it wasn’t a moment before QE2 ended rumors of QE3 started in the secondary marketplace. Speculation centered on Fed strategy. If the central bank failed to boost the nation’s economy and housing markets as a result of QE2, would QE3 be structured to do the opposite?