Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon

Gretchen Morgenson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times, examines how the financial meltdown resulted from the interaction between Washington, Wall Street, and corrupt mortgage lenders. The book exposes how financial watchdogs intended to protect the country were instead complicit in the actions that destabilized the American economy. Drawing on previously untapped sources and research from coauthor Joshua Rosner, Morgenson traces the path to the crisis. The authors examine Fannie Mae's growth through the 1990s with Clinton administration support, and its opposition to government oversight despite benefiting from public subsidies. They document the roles of Fannie Mae executives, Countrywide Financial, Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, HUD, Congress, the FDIC, and major Wall Street players in ignoring warning signs of disaster. The book was named a Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book for 2011 and one of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year.