How 'Reckless' Greed Contributed To Financial Crisis
Gretchen Morgenson, who covers world financial markets for The New York Times, has been untangling the complex foreclosure mess and efforts to reform government regulations on Wall Street for several years. Now Morgenson and co-author Joshua Rosner have written a book about the origins of the financial meltdown. In Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon, Morgenson and Rosner describe how regulators failed to control greed and recklessness on Wall Street. Read more...

Litsen to NPR interview with Gretchen Mortgenson 

It Teetered, It Tottered, It Was Bound to Fall Down
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON and JOSHUA ROSNER This article was adapted from “Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon,” by Gretchen Morgenson, a business reporter and columnist for The New York Times, and Joshua Rosner, a managing director at the independent research consultant Graham Fisher. The book is to be published on Tuesday by Times Books.

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New York Investigates Banks’ Role in Financial Crisis
The New York attorney general has requested information and documents in recent weeks from three major Wall Street banks about their mortgage securities operations during the credit boom, indicating the existence of a new investigation into practices that contributed to billions in mortgage losses. The possibility has also been raised that the banks did not disclose to mortgage insurers the risks in the instruments they were agreeing to insure against default. Another potential area of inquiry — the billions of dollars in credit extended by Wall Street to aggressive mortgage lenders that allowed them to continue making questionable loans far longer than they otherwise could have done.

Case on Mortgage Official Is Said to Be Dropped
The conclusion by prosecutors that Mr. Mozilo, 72, did not engage in criminal conduct while directing Countrywide will likely fuel broad concerns that few high-level executives of financial companies are being held accountable for the actions that led to the financial crisis of 2008. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been lost by investors while millions of borrowers have lost their homes. Few of the people who ran the institutions that contributed to the disaster have been found liable.

Op-Ed: Privatization Alone Won't Fix Housing Mess
The Obama administration has advocated closing government-backed mortgage providers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The New York Times' Gretchen Morgenson says the U.S. government still has an important role to play when it comes to home ownership.  Related article:Gretchen Morgenson's New York Times Piece, "Imagining Life Without Fannie And Freddie"

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Countrywide Subpoena Could Make a Few Powerful People Nervous
Details of the subpoena might make more than a few powerful people nervous. This is the first time anyone has sought records regarding all government officials who may have benefitted from the so-called "Friends of Angelo" and other VIP programs that Countrywide had. Congressional investigations have revealed Countrywide extended favorable terms to powerful shakers-and-movers in government in hopes of wielding influence. VIP mortgages were also given to President Clinton's former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros, and President Bush's Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson. Jackson's daughter even got VIP loan status when an internal Countrywide e-mail noted her father "is expected to be confirmed as Secretary of HUD."

Preapproved: Well, It Sounded Good
Her local bank approved her for a mortgage. But then a Pulte Homes saleswoman told her that she would get a $4,000 credit toward closing costs if she took out a loan with the homebuilder’s banking unit instead. Ms. Calderone, 38, agreed. She deposited $20,000 in earnest money and set aside $80,000 more for a down payment on the $347,000 house. Her closing date, documents show, was scheduled for late summer, about six months later. Then her troubles began. Although she had been “preapproved” by Pulte, the company ultimately denied her the loan. Then, contending that Ms. Calderone had defaulted on the purchase agreement by failing to close on time, Pulte kept her $20,000 deposit. The house went back on the market.

"Where Are The Wall Street Prosecutions!" - Gretchen Morgenson Agrees With Spitzer & Angry C-SPAN Callers
Gretchen Morgenson has covered the financial crisis better and more extensively than just about anybody in the print media.   Cohan is the author of House of Cards about the collapse of Bear Stearns.  In this clip, Morgenson, Cohan and Spitzer are asking the same question:  Where are the prosecutions for crimes connected to the financial crisis?  Geithner and Bernanke also take a beating for failures of regulation and oversight during the build-up.  Spitzer calls it "The Peter Principle on steroids."  Great discussion -- they sound like they've been reading the Daily Bail.

Bad News: New Book Probes Role of Press in Financial Crisis
Given that some economists still debate the root causes of the Great Depression, little wonder that a multitude of competing stories still vies for affirmation as explanation for the financial crisis of 2008... As several chapters in Bad News make clear, a good deal of excellent work in the years before the crisis could have limited the pain had warnings been heeded--not least, work by my former Times colleagues Gretchen Morgenson and David Leonhardt, who sounded the alarm early on that home prices were getting well of whack with American incomes, setting up a fall. The trouble was that a louder chorus repeatedly drowned out this probing reporting about the magnitude of the real estate bubble--a steady celebration of permanently rising home price, the fantasy that propelled a construction binge, a mortgage bonanza and no end of wealth that got created along the way. That chorus abetted and enabled the capture of the regulators who are supposed to be able to tune out such noise while dispassionately scrutinizing the numbers.

A Bank Crisis Whodunit, With Laughs and Tears
Finally, if it’s comic relief you’re after, turn to Page 105 for an interview with Angelo R. Mozilo, former chief executive of Countrywide Financial, a lender that profited by roping unsuspecting borrowers into poisonous loans.   Mr. Mozilo, the commission said, described his company as having “prevented social unrest” by providing loans to 25 million borrowers, many of them members of minority groups. Never mind that throngs of these loans have resulted in foreclosures and evictions. “Countrywide was one of the greatest companies in the history of this country,” Mr. Mozilo maintained, “and probably made more difference to society, to the integrity of our society, than any company in the history of America.” You cannot make this stuff up.  Related Article - See You Tube Quantitative Easing Explained