Reckless Endangerment
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Reckless Endangerment

How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon

Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner
Times Books, 2011
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Editorial Rating

7

Recommendation

The United States and the rest of the world are still feeling the effects of the economic crisis of 2008. But how did it all begin? According to New York Times Pulitzer Prize winner Gretchen Morgenson and her co-author Joshua Rosner, it all started with a government housing effort called National Partners in Homeownership and a Washington insider named James A. Johnson, the CEO of Fannie Mae. Rapacious Wall Streeters, sleeping watchdogs and unscrupulous businesspeople took it from there. This impassioned book might have benefited from fewer anonymous sources and a more even tone. It covers important and sometimes easily forgotten recent history in a sweeping – but not all-encompassing – explanation of what led the US to the edge of the abyss in September 2008. getAbstract believes that readers will appreciate this explanation of the ticking – and ultimately exploded – time bomb of subprime loans, mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations.

Summary

The March to the Brink

In 1994, President William Clinton’s administration kicked off an ambitious project, the National Partners in Homeownership Agency, to increase the number of people in the US who owned homes. Working with both public and private entities, it followed the “loose lending practices” of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) under CEO James A. Johnson’s stewardship. Johnson, who had a storied political pedigree, led Fannie Mae from 1991 to 1998. During his tenure, it went from being “a sleepy utility” to a powerhouse whose main goal – it later came out – was to make a lot of money for itself.

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), which Congress had created in 1992, was charged with regulating Fannie Mae and its twin, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac). The law also ordered Fannie and Freddie to lead efforts to help Americans buy homes, especially people who could never afford them before. To meet those ambitious homeownership goals, Johnson had Fannie Mae:

  • Relax requirements on down-payments to “5% or less.”
  • Pursue previously untried ventures such as “mortgage insurance...

About the Authors

Gretchen Morgenson covers business affairs for The New York Times and received a Pulitzer Prize for her Wall Street reporting. Joshua Rosner is managing director of Graham Fisher and Company, a New York investment research firm. He was among the first analysts to identify accounting problems at the government-sponsored-enterprises and to warn of the credit crisis.

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