Reckless Endangerment

Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner is a timely, well-documented, tell-all book detailing the people and the agencies that engineered the housing bubble and its collapse. This might easily been subtitled "How James Johnson got away with Fannie Mae." If you're like me and you remember bits and pieces of what was going on from about 1995 up to 2008, this is a fascinating book that puts all the pieces together, AND gives all the information about what was going on behind the scenes that the average American didn't know about. Who did what; who was in whose pocket; what deals/scams were made; who knew and looked the other way, etc.

No hyperbole here - just a grim account of the facts and the reasons why the real estate and mortgage industry are in the state they're in now.