"In September 2008, beset by mounting losses on high-risk mortgages and mortgage securities, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation teetered on the brink of insolvency. Fearing that confidence in the housing market would collapse completely if Freddie Mac and its competitor Fannie Mae...

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...

"Is the 2007-2008 U.S. sub-prime mortgage financial crisis truly a new and different phenomena? Our examination of the longer historical record finds stunning qualitative and quantitative parallels to 18 earlier post-war banking crises in industrialized countries. Specifically, the run-up in...