We’re about to find out, in just about 90 days, if the housing market is able to stand on its own two feet, or if its fiscal knees are going to buckle under it. The result is going to be the first real test of whether the federal government’s massive efforts to revive the economy will work, or if all we’ve been doing is jolting a body without a pulse.

Since the fall of 2008, the U.S. government has effectively been the only buyer of mortgage-backed securities. The government became the secondary market because private investors began treating the securitized products not as though they were pooled mortgage investments, but pools of Ebola.

So the mortgage market – and with it, the housing market – has been kept liquid only by the actions of the federal government. And that commitment was also one designed to keep mortgage rates low. That approach was meant to stimulate residential real estate buyers to act now, to take advantage of cheap financing. Most homebuyers, after all, are more worried about what the monthly payment looks like than the actual cost of the house.

But on March 31, the federal money spigot is being turned off. The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve has voted that as the cutoff for the Fed’s $1.4 trillion buying spree of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds.

One month later, on April 30, the stimulating Home Buyer Tax Credit program – in which both first-time homebuyers and qualifying repeat buyers are handed over between $6,500 to $8,000 to make a real estate commitment – comes to an end. Although deals don’t have to close until June, they’ve got to be in place by April 30.

When the government stops subsidizing the mortgage market, mortgage interest rates are going to climb. Private investors still see significant risk in mortgages. Foreclosure rates haven’t fallen. Delinquency rates are rising. Investors want to be compensated for taking on additional risk. Since there’s also sizeable demand for private investment in other debt instruments – like private commercial capital – that means that in order to attract private investors to mortgage securities, the payoff has to be enticing. That means interest rates must go up.

When the government stops subsidizing the real estate market, home prices are sure to fall even more than they have. Buyers, knowing they’ve got thousands of taxpayer dollars in their pockets, haven’t needed to negotiate on price as hard as possible. But with their mortgages now costing them significantly more, and no subsidy to help make the down payment or reduce the principal, they’re going to be much tougher on asking sellers to reduce prices.

And that’s if they even go home-shopping at all.

What’s in question here is whether the government’s intervention accomplished what it intended. It was not meant to permanently prop up bad markets. It was meant to get markets through a trip to the emergency room

In Massachusetts, the number of home sales has risen every month for the past six months, and that’s likely to continue right through, well, March at least. Have the government’s actions been enough to bring private investment back to the secondary mortgage market? Has tax policy energized the housing market long enough for buyers to believe they’d better jump back in, with or without a helping hand?

There are those who would rather not find out, and would like Big Brother involved for the foreseeable future. We disagree. Government intervention in capitalistic markets is always meant to be a temporary situation – if not, these wouldn’t be capitalistic markets, they’d be socialistic or communistic ones. It’s time to find out what kind of economic system we’re actually living in, even if it turns out to be a painful lesson.