Good timing. A week after the Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben S. Bernanke publicly opposed the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and instead argued that the Fed should keep its consumer protection responsibilities, the Fed releases this: “5 Tips for Shopping for a Mortgage.”

The bullet points:

1. Know what you can afford.

2. Shop around — compare loans from lenders and brokers.

3. Understand loan prices and fees.

4. Know the risks and benefits of loan options.

5. Get advice from trusted sources.

Now, one might be hesitant to accept financial advice from an organization whose previous chairman encouraged borrowers to take out adjustable-rate mortgages at exactly the wrong time. But these tips — like those the Fed has recently released for avoiding foreclosure scams, improving your credit score and other subjects — are pretty sensible. Nonspecific, inoffensive and largely obvious, but sensible nonetheless.

The Times’s personal finance writers Ron Lieber and Tara Siegel Bernard had major issues with the Fed’s mortgage calculator, however.