San Antonio College Library

Over the past decade, a new mortgage market offering loans at low interest rates and for little or no money down has given low-income people an opportunity to pursue the American dream of homeownership. The resulting wave in home buying promised to stabilize neighborhoods and families, boost the economy, and reduce crime. In many ways, the optimists were correct, but now, less than fifteen years later, the subprime mortgage market is collapsing, threatening...

"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created by Congress to serve the American Dream of homeownership. By the end of the century, they had become extremely profitable and powerful companies, instrumental in putting millions of Americans in their homes. So why does the government now want them dead? In 2008, the U.S. Treasury put Fannie and Freddie into a life-support state known as 'conservatorship' to prevent their failure--and worldwide economic chaos....

"The former Fannie Mae CFO's inside look at the war between the financial giants and government regulators A provocative true-life thriller about the all-out fight for dominance of the mortgage industry--and how it nearly destroyed the global financial system. Many books have been written about the 2008 financial crisis, but they miss the biggest story of the meltdown: the battle between giant financial companies to dominate the $11 trillion mortgage...

This surprising narrative goes back more than twenty years to reveal, in rich, anecdotal detail, how Wall Street, the mortgage industry, and the government conspired to change the way Americans bought their homes, creating a perfect storm. The authors take us inside elusive institutions such as Goldman Sachs, AIG, and Fannie Mae, to reveal who changed the game and why.

There is still no consensus on who or what caused the financial crisis which engulfed the world, beginning in the summer of 2007. A huge number of suspects have been identified, from greedy investment bankers, through feckless borrowers, dilatory regulators and myopic central bankers to violent video games and high levels of testosterone among the denizens of trading floors. There is not even agreement on whether the crisis shows a need for more government...