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Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon Hardcover – May 24, 2011
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The New York Times's Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist reveals how the financial meltdown emerged from the toxic interplay of Washington, Wall Street, and corrupt mortgage lenders.
In Reckless Endangerment, Gretchen Morgenson, the star business columnist of The New York Times, exposes how the watchdogs who were supposed to protect the country from financial harm were actually complicit in the actions that finally blew up the American economy.
Drawing on previously untapped sources and building on original research from coauthor Joshua Rosner—who himself raised early warnings with the public and investors, and kept detailed records—Morgenson connects the dots that led to this fiasco.
Morgenson and Rosner draw back the curtain on Fannie Mae, the mortgage-finance giant that grew, with the support of the Clinton administration, through the 1990s, becoming a major opponent of government oversight even as it was benefiting from public subsidies. They expose the role played not only by Fannie Mae executives but also by enablers at Countrywide Financial, Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, HUD, Congress, the FDIC, and the biggest players on Wall Street, to show how greed, aggression, and fear led countless officials to ignore warning signs of an imminent disaster.
Character-rich and definitive in its analysis, this is the one account of the financial crisis you must read.
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherTimes Books
- Publication dateMay 24, 2011
- Dimensions6.47 x 1.3 x 9.54 inches
- ISBN-109780805091205
- ISBN-13978-0805091205
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Gretchen Morgenson is a national treasure. Year after year, she has dragged Wall Street miscreants out of the shadows, exposing their dirty secrets to the public that they bamboozled with schemes and deceits. Now, working with Joshua Rosner, she has trained her expert eye on the mortgage mess that pushed the American economy to the brink. In stunning detail, Morgenson exposes the truth behind the worst financial calamity of modern times, weaving a tale that is as mesmerizing as it is horrifying. Reckless Endangerment names the names and reveals the secrets of the plutocrats and politicians whose greed and recklessness threatened the foundations of capitalism. It is essential reading for anyone struggling to understand how America entered the new era of financial chaos.” ―Kurt Eichenwald, New York Times bestselling author of Conspiracy of Fools and The Informant
“Even before Reckless Endangerment, Gretchen Morgenson was my nominee for Reporter of the Decade for her forensic and prophetic coverage of Wall Street. Now, she and the equally talented sleuth Joshua Rosner, like Holmes and Dr. Watson, have pieced together the clues to a seminal mystery of the financial debacle: how American taxpayers were suckered by the shenanigans, greed, egos, back scratching, and guile of financial and political elites who swarmed like vultures around Fannie Mae, picking it clean of oversight and accountability while its executives gorged themselves on the spoils. Naming names and taking no prisoners, they drill deep into one of the most disturbing scandals of our time, perpetrated in the name of helping "the little guy." Read it and weep. Read it and vow: Never Again!” ―Bill Moyers, journalist, and President, Schumann Media Center
“Morgenson and Rosner have written the long-awaited volume that gets to the heart of the mortgage crisis. The fearlessness and breadth of reporting make the book as compellingly readable as it is exhaustive. Reckless Endangerment is a remarkable achievement--and should be required reading for all Americans.” ―Bryan Burrough, Vanity Fair special correspondent and bestselling author of Barbarians at the Gate and The Big Rich
“Gretchen Morgenson and Josh Rosner show us how, over the last fifteen years, the mortgage lending industry used money and political influence to escape regulation, enrich itself, and create a catastrophe. Particularly in its dissection of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and their enablers, this book is unmatched in its depth and invaluable to anyone interested in the causes and lessons of the financial crisis.” ―Charles Ferguson, Academy award-winning director of Inside Job
“A chilling account of the reckless disregard for ethical or civilized values at the heart of our financial system. If this compelling history does not completely turn your stomach, that's good - because by bailing out these individuals, their attitudes, and their way of life, we have set ourselves up for another nauseating turn of the Financial Wheel.” ―Simon Johnson, co-author of 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and The Next Financial Meltdown
About the Author
Gretchen Morgenson is a business reporter and columnist at The New York Times, where she also serves as assistant business and financial editor. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for her "trenchant and incisive" coverage of Wall Street. Prior to joining the Times in 1998, she worked as a broker at Dean Witter in the 1980s, and as a reporter at Forbes, Worth, and Money magazines. She lives with her husband and son in New York City.
Joshua Rosner is a managing director at the independent research consultancy Graham Fisher and Co. and was among the first analysts to identify accounting problems at the government-sponsored-enterprises and to warn of the coming credit crisis. He advises regulators and institutional investors on housing and mortgage-finance-related issues. He lives in New York City.
Product details
- ASIN : 0805091203
- Publisher : Times Books; First Edition, Sixth Printing (May 24, 2011)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780805091205
- ISBN-13 : 978-0805091205
- Item Weight : 1.4 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.47 x 1.3 x 9.54 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #977,968 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #768 in Political Economy
- #1,746 in Economic Conditions (Books)
- #2,112 in Economic History (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Gretchen Morgenson is the Senior Financial Reporter in the Investigations unit at NBC News, a position she assumed in Dec. 2019. Her stories appear on NBCNews.com and as segments on NBC News network, cable and streaming television shows.
Previously, Morgenson spent two years as Senior Special Writer in the Investigations unit at The Wall Street Journal, and almost 20 years as assistant business and financial editor and a columnist at The New York Times. She began covering world financial markets for The Times in May 1998 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for her “trenchant and incisive” coverage of Wall Street in which she revealed deep conflicts of interest among powerful and respected brokerage firm analysts.
A graduate of Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, Morgenson worked as a stockbroker in New York City in the early 1980s, was a writer at Money Magazine later that decade and an assistant managing editor at Forbes Magazine in the 1990s. She is co-author, with Joshua Rosner, of “Reckless Endangerment,” a 2011 New York Times bestseller about the origins of the mortgage crisis. She is also co-author, with Rosner, of “These are the Plunderers,” a book scrutinizing the private equity industry to be published by Simon & Schuster in May 2023.
In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Morgenson has won three Gerald Loeb Awards--one in 2002 for excellence in financial commentary, another in 2009 for her coverage of Wall Street and a third with a group of New York Times reporters in 2009. The following year, she received the Elliott V. Bell Award from the New York Financial Writers’ Association for her “significant long-term contribution to the profession of financial journalism.” In 2018, she received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers for her “outstanding contribution to business journalism.”
Ms. Morgenson has also served on two Pulitzer Prize juries, evaluating investigative reporting entries in 2009 and 2010, and was a Loeb Award final judge for several years.
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First, it is important to recognize that there is enough blame to go around. No single factor led to the collapse. It was not a Republican or Democratic show, nor was it big business vs. the little guy; everyone had a share in it. I could not detect a political or philosophical bias, except being in favor of honesty. The lead author, Morgenson, is an editor at the New York Times, not exactly a Tea Party organ. So, let us look at some of the contributors.
The underpinnings of the story can be said to have their beginnings with the Homestead Act of 1862, which gave land to settlers willing to develop it. America has always thought that homeownership was a foundation of our culture. President Clinton stated it well when he said in an important 1995 policy speech that “When we boost the number of homeowners in our country, we strengthen our economy, create jobs, build up the middle class, and build better citizens”. These are probably universal beliefs, but President Clinton, and most of the Congress along with most of the public did not realize that it makes a difference how these “homeowners” come to own a home.
The Federal National Mortgage Association, now known as Fannie Mae, was created as a regular government agency in 1938 to buy mortgages from banks, allowing them to lend to more borrowers in the belief that this would help the country recover from the Great Depression. Strict underwriting standards were practiced by both the banks and Fannie Mae. The results were generally positive, and Fannie Mae lived its life without much note, run by civil servants. In 1968 President Lyndon Johnson needed to clear Fannie Mae’s formal liabilities from the government’s general fund ledger because of the need to limit the perceived cost of the Vietnam War. Fannie Mae was gradually transformed into a nominally private company, with stock sold to the general public in 1989. The government had formally divested itself of Fannie Mae; but it retained a measure of control that implied, but did not explicitly provide, financial backing.
In 1991 James A. Johnson was elevated to be the head of Fannie Mae. He understood a few basic truths. First, the implied government backing of Fannie Mae gave it an advantage in selling bonds, and later mortgage backed securities. Investors were willing to take a "slightly" lower interest rate from Fannie than from ordinary commercial issuers. This was only a fraction of a percent, but when applied to hundreds of billions of dollars, it added up to real money. This general fact was, of course, obvious, and was touted as the reason Fannie could offer home loans at "slightly" less interest than other sources. Johnson’s insight, however, was that because the total cost structures of both Fannie Mae and all other lenders was complex, and protected as trade secrets, no one outside Fannie’s inner sanctum could know exactly the size of these two “slightlies”. That is, how much of Fannie’s cost advantage was passed on to borrowers, and how much remained for distribution to the top officers. It turns out that the amount was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Johnson alone took home $100 million in nine years.
It’s not as though no one outside Fannie Mae was aware of this situation. Various financial and Congressional watchdogs attempted to open up Fannie’s books to see just how big was the advantage gained by the implied government backing, and how much of this was passed on to borrowers. Johnson’s second basic truth was that money could buy protection. Not all of Fannie’s cost advantage went to executive bonuses. A comparable amount was spent in the form of grants to diverse political organizations that could potentially harm Fannie, and of course directly to congressional office holders. One way this was done was to set up “outreach” offices in most large cities, even though Fannie was a centralized operation dealing only wholesale with the largest banks, all in New York. These outreach offices would hire relatives of important congressmen, and could also make donations to politically connected “public interest” groups. For example, an obscure outfit called the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) had been agitating for tighter government control of Fannie Mae, but after receiving a generous grant, reversed course. Similarly, bills introduced in Congress to check on Fannie’s lending practices died when appropriate campaign contributions were made.
The infamous Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 is often cited as a major cause of the sub-prime mortgage fiasco. While it set some of the background conditions, it was in place long before the problems became rampant. One could say that the real problem started in 1992 when the Boston Federal Reserve Bank published a report, later shown to be seriously flawed, that suggested that racial bias by lenders was preventing minorities from getting loans that they deserved. This report led to a program called National Partners in Homeownership, crafted by none other than James A. Johnson, and taken as his own by President William Clinton in 1994. The central thrust of the program was “underwriting flexibility” especially in minority census tracts. Fannie and others experimented with a variety of “flexible” underwriting methods from 1994 to 1997, until they felt they knew how to do it. Aside from simply lowering standards of creditworthiness, they learned how to use new software that automated the process of evaluating borrowers. This speeded the loan process by essentially eliminating the human judgment factor. The Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO) credit score is a remaining element of this process. While it seems like a small factor, it allowed loan brokers to ramp up their production from one or two loans a day to fifty or so. And production it was. The real money was made not by widows and orphans collecting interest on their portfolios, but by the “originators” who collected hefty fees on each loan at the outset.
For this to work, of course, the investors who ultimately bought the loans had to have some assurance that they would be paid back in the form of a regular income stream coming from mortgage payments. Enter the Ratings Agencies, of which Standard and Poor’s, Moody’s , and Fitch are the biggest. As a matter of fact, they are not only just big. Federal financial regulations require that banks, among others, can hold their required capital only, or mostly, in issues that are rated highly by just these agencies. This is a big factor for banks because such capital earns less than the bank can make on regular loans. Other large investors use the ratings for evaluating their own purchases. This would be fine if the rating agencies took their fiduciary responsibility seriously. Unfortunately, the rating agencies are paid by the issuers for each separate security they rate. So, they have a strong interest not only in volume, that is, lots of securities, but also in being accommodating to the issuers. There are, after all, three agencies, and an issuer packaging a block of mortgages can go to any of them. He is unlikely to go back to one that gave his last issue a low rating based on a downbeat assessment of the likelihood that the borrowers would repay. Can you spell “Conflict of Interest”? (There are rating agencies that are paid by the buyers of bonds, but they have only a tiny fraction of the market.)
Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts is often excoriated as the embodiment of Congressional corruption in the matter of Fannie Mae. He not only prevented several attempts at opening investigations of Fannie’s practices, he used his influence to cause the company to hire his “partner”, Herb Moses, for a top job shortly after receiving an MBA. Moses was taken on as assistant director for product initiatives, which meant finding ways to relax lending standards. While certainly corrupt; Frank probably was not much more corrupt than other congressmen have been in similar positions of arbitrary power.
Much of the investment banking business was just as corrupt as Frank, though not as visibly. They made big fees by underwriting mortgage backed securities. What this underwriting means is that the bank, say Citigroup, would create a security, kind of like a bond, using its own capital to buy mortgages for the security. When they had enough, like a hundred million dollars, they would get one of the rating agencies to rate the issue, and then sell it to large investors, like pension funds or mutual funds. To keep this business going, they had to continually find new mortgages, which came from “originators”, who could be banks but more likely retail mortgage brokers, who often were little more than bucket shops. Similarly, the originators needed the continual flow of new capital so they could make more loans and thus more fees. The fees were indeed high for everyone because as time went on, and restrictions were loosened, the borrowers were of a lower class and less sophisticated, so less able to understand the terms to which they were agreeing, leading to what has been called “predatory” lending.
Predatory lending can take many forms. For example, it could be a matter of steering someone with basically good credit to a more expensive loan more suited to a real deadbeat. Or, it could be selling someone a negative amortization loan on the basis of the attractively low payments, without explaining that the lender would be going progressively further in debt with each payment. Or, it could be a refinance at poor terms sold to someone who owns his modest home free and clear, with the likelihood that the payments will be impossible, and foreclosure soon to follow.
Regular retail banks are supposed to follow rules that preclude most of these practices, and most do, but independent mortgage brokers are not held to such high standards, and investment bank packagers of loans are not either. (This is an oversimplification, but seems generally to be the case.)
The story goes on and on. Franklin Raines took over Fannie Mae from James Johnson. He learned from Johnson, and was at least as good at it. Angelo Mozilo grew Countywide Mortgage Company from a two man shop on the West Coast to a multibillion dollar operation with thirty five thousand employees by 2003. One of these employees was Paul Pelosi Jr., the son of Nancy Pelosi. This was a small example of how Mozilo used cash and connections to influence regulatory rules to his advantage, mostly in the direction of weakening credit standards. In this, he worked closely with Fannie and Freddie.
But enough reporting; what can we learn from all this muck? First, and this has little to do with government, when ordinary people handle gargantuan amounts of other people’s money, in multilevel transactions both arcane and hidden by proprietary secrecy, they are eventually likely to want to keep some for themselves. When they see that this is possible with no consequences, they get greedy and accelerate their depredations.
Second, when government tries to achieve generally desirable social goals by manipulating private activity, there will be unanticipated consequences even beyond the greed factor mentioned above. The reason is that the real world is just too complex for disinterested monitors to manage it well. Some will see some of the problems, and will warn of them, but others will see only what they want to see, and ignore the Cassandras. We can always look back and say that the Congress should have seen the problems growing in the unregulated mortgage market and written “good” regulations, but this ignores the influence that the beneficiaries of lack of regulation can bring to bear as well as the probability that every new regulation will be followed by a new means of circumventing it.
As investors, we must remember that only we are responsible for our wealth. We can’t really lay this off to someone else, be it a large company or the government. As the economy becomes more complex, this is harder to do, but must be done.
Finally, few of the essential rules have been changed. Banks are required to hold more capital, but Fannie and Freddie’s underwriting rules are not much different. The Community Reinvestment Act is still in force. The rating agencies are still paid by the issuers. All of the nefarious actors are still either in power or in very comfortable retirement. The difference is that about a trillion dollars of taxpayer money has been injected into the system
What can the American people learn from the economic collapse caused by the housing bubble? Quite a lot one might think. In a new book Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner sets out to put the record straight, from the utopian desire by politicians to provide the American dream - home ownership - to low and middle income families, a mixed brew of deceit and avarice by Washington DC insiders, profits at investment rating agencies, to the brave attempt by Georgia's General Assembly to stop the madness.
The American taxpayer is paying the price and enduring the inflationary monetary policy to right the largest bubble in human history. In 2000 the total value of homes in the US was $11.4 trillion. By 2008 that number shot up to $20.3 trillion. In 2000 mortgage-debt was a trifling $4.8 trillion while six short years later (2006) it skyrocketed to a whopping $9.3 trillion. All told $1.3 trillion of this mortgage-debt is considered subprime with a 69% foreclosure rate. The average owner of a subprime mortgage reads at the sixth grade level and was never required to show proof of income or make a downpayment.
The singular focused drive to bring home ownership to low and middle income families by James Johnson, Chairman of Fannie Mae from 1991-1999; Angelo Mozillo, Chairman Countrywide Mortgage; Scott Hartman, Chairman of NovaStar, and the Federal Reserve was a witches brew of altruism and greed. These men set up the mechanism whereby lax lending standards, little Congressional oversight, securitization of the mortgage debt, and taxpayer guarantees set into motion the cataclysmic meltdown. By 2007 Countrywide Credit and NovaStar transferred $400B in subprime mortgages directly to Fannie Mae for securitization. These packaged subprime mortgages were sold to investors all over the world. Politicians did not dare to question the policies, because they supported the efforts to bring homeownership to millions. It was a time for bravery and few stood tall, but Morgenson and Rosner's book details their actions.
Walker F. Todd, PhD, JD, published FDICIA's Emergency Liquidity Provisions in the 4th Quarter of 1993. Dr. Todd had discovered an overlooked amendment added by then Senator Christopher Dodd to the 1991 Federal Deposit Corporation Improvement Act (FDICIA). This amendment extended federal bailout authorization to insurance companies and investment banks. Senator Dodd's constituents were American Insurance Group (AIG) and many investment banks. Dr. Todd's report was quietly censured by the Federal Reserve and never gathered traction nor acclaim. It wasn't until 2001 - 2002 that the State of Georgia took steps to clean up the mess.
By 2002 subprime mortgages in Georgia topped $7.1B as Countrywide Credit and NovaStar focused on low and middle income subprime mortgages. But many complaints were filtering in to legislators offices of predatory lending practices. Early in 2002 Georgia State Senator Vincent Fort (D-39) drafted legislation to put a stop to the predatory lending practices by subprime mortgage brokers. Senator Fort's Fair Lending Act (SB70) created consumer protections against high-cost home loans by restricting excessive fees and charges, and providing for penalties if the law was not followed. Those knowingly breaking the law could face criminal charges. The new law created liability for any institution that participated in securitization of subprime mortgages considered predatory. Any Wall Street firm that purchased a mortgage to be placed in a securitization pool could be liable under the law. The Fair Lending Act passed 52-0 in the Georgia Senate on March 6, 2001. The Roll Call is below;
Senate Votes - SV0178
03/06/2001 11:53am SB 70 PASSAGE BY SUBSTITUTE
Yeas (Y): 52 Nays (N): 0 N/V (X): 0 Excused (E): 4
Y Balfour, D Y Beatty, M Y Blitch, P Y Bowen, R Y Brown, R Y Brush, B
Y Burton, J Y Butler, G Y Cable, S Y Cagle, C Y Cheeks, D Y Crotts, M
Y Dean, N Y Fort, V Y Gillis, H Y Gingrey, J Y Golden, T Y Guhl, A
Y Haines, D Y Hamrick, B Y Harbison, E Y Harp, B Y Hecht, G Y Hill, J
E Hooks, G Y Jackson, C Y James, D Y Johnson, E E Kemp, R Y Ladd, B
Y Lamutt, R Y Lee, D Y Marable, R E Meyer von Bremen, M Y Mullis, J Y Paul, R
Y Perdue, S Y Polak, M Y Price, T Y Ragan, H Y Ray, B Y Scott, D
Y Seabaugh, M Y Smith, F Y Starr, T Y Stephens, B Y Stokes, C Y Streat, V
Y Tanksley, C Y Tate, H Y Thomas, D Y Thomas, N Y Thomas, R E Thompson, S
Y Walker, C
Governor Roy Barnes signed the House version H.B. 1361 Fair Lending Act on April 23, 2002, but not before an all out blistering assault by subprime mortgage lenders and the credit-rating agencies Standard and Poors, Fitch, and Moody's. They feared other states would adopt the same type of law passed in Georgia shutting down the profitable subprime mortgage securitization efforts. Governor Roy Barnes was targeted for defeat in November 2002 and at the opening of the 2003 General Assembly session, Standard and Poors threatened the new Governor Sonny Perdue and the Georgia General Assembly in a press release on January 16, 2003. Lobbyists circulated the press release throughout the Gold Dome. Legislators were urged to amend H.B 1316 or face a lack of mortgage lending in Georgia. The General Assembly quickly conformed and on March 7, 2003 Governor Sonny Perdue signed an amended Fair Lending Act. The rest is history. From 2003 to 2006 seven trillion subprime loans were securitized and sold to investors nationwide. Georgia leads the nation in bank failures and in 2011 one in every 387 homes are in foreclosure according to Realty Track.
This is a fabulously detailed book, especially considering the complex nature of the housing bubble. It names the greedy and those with moral weakness. It illustrates the political expediency on all sides, but in the end it laments lack of accountability of those who were responsible.
What can we learn from this event? When the State of Georgia passed the first Act it sent the power brokers; the credit-rating agencies, subprime lenders, mortgage brokers, banks and Fannie Mae into a panic. Had all the other states followed Georgia's lead, the bubble would not have exploded and the unwinding of the securitization vehicles (Collateralized Mortgage Obligations) would have proceeded like a regulated bankruptcy. The power to protect the citizen lies in the hands of the state(s) legislatures. This is what the Founding Fathers created with the Constitution. The state(s) must stand up to the federal government and protect its citizens.
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The CEO of Fannie James Johnson and his top four executives took home $ multi-million annual pay packages and were vested with tens of $millions of company stock, which elicited the CBO to conclude "Congress may want to revisit the special relationship that exists between the government and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac." If only these prescient words had been heeded then it might well have saved the US taxpayer $153 billion, and still counting bailout in 2008. However, the widespread $ handouts to Politicians and their advisers ensured that the CBO report was largely ignored and Fannie and Freddie and their senior executives were able to keep their first class seats on 'the gravy train'. The consequential ramifications of the front-running, greed driven charge of these GSE's into the creation of the sub-prime abyss was, perhaps, the single-most lethal act which precipitated the 2008 Global Credit Crunch Crisis.
The authors, Gretchen Morgenson, and Joshua Rosner, a Pulitzer Prize winning business journalist and leading expert on housing and mortgage finance issues respectively, have meticulously crafted a really interesting and highly informative narrative of the 'front of stage' role played by Fannie and Freddie, which gives a most comprehensive insight into the disproportionate and at times critically misguided and self-serving influences exercised by James Johnson, and his colleagues.
The phrase 'Reckless Endangerment' describes a single or series of acts involving the engagement in conduct not amounting to an armed robbery but something that creates a substantial risk of a serious fiduciary loss to others. Certainly in the case of the sheer mayhem that resulted in the implosion of the sub-prime imbroglio, this became a reality and at a catastrophic cost to the US Taxpayer.
Morgenson and Rosner not only draw back the curtain on Fannie Mae but on it's enablers at Countrywide Financial, Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, HUD, Congress, and the biggest players on Wall Street, revealing how greed, aggression and fear led countless officials to ignore the warning signs of the inevitable financial disaster. The authors are irked that the key players both individuals and corporations seemed to have got away with it. Whereas the Joe Public tax payer was bled almost dry, the likes of James Johnson and others are luxuriating in their federal enabled wealth, Fannie and Freddie have been shored up along with many entities on Wall Street, and little or no recourse has been taken against the politicians and regulators who buried their heads in the sand thus blotting out the warnings heaped frequently on them.
A classy book that is highly readable, and illuminating, but does leave the feeling that not too many lessons have been learned which is a bit of a downer.
I learnt a lot reading this book, even though it is getting on for six years since it was first published.
It really needs to be noted that since 2008, 386 banks have failed in the USA. The banking system, unhinged with the end of the Glass-Steagal Banking regulation by President Clinton which kept American depositors and investors safe from greedy bankers for decades, has not been fixed. Those responsible for this chaos which destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people have not been brought to court. The authors and this reader find this incomprehensible but at least they have named names.



