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Days of Slaughter: Inside the Fall of Freddie Mac and Why It Could Happen Again

Amazon.com Price:  $15.95 (as of 12/05/2019 17:44 PST- Details)

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Description

In September 2008, beset by mounting losses on high-risk mortgages and mortgage securities, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation teetered on the point of insolvency. Fearing that confidence in the housing market would collapse completely if Freddie Mac and its competitor Fannie Mae failed, the US government made the difficult decision to place the two firms into conservatorship, taking regulate away from shareholders. Even though the taxpayer commitment of hundreds of billions was meant to stabilize the housing finance system, Freddie’s fall at the start of the financial crisis set off shockwaves world wide.

In Days of Slaughter, Susan Wharton Gates, a former 19-year Freddie Mac employee and vice president of public policy, provides a vivid eyewitness account of the competing economic and political forces that led to massive losses for shareholders, investors, homeowners―and taxpayers. With a keen eye to the policy landscape, Gates relates the fateful decisions that led to Freddie Mac’s downfall and desperate rescue. She also examines today’s worrisome headlines about potential future bailouts, the uneven housing recovery, and stymied congressional reform efforts. All over the book, Gates argues convincingly that policymakers will not be able to safely reform the massive housing finance system that currently rests squarely on taxpayer shoulders without addressing deeper issues of ideology, moral hazard, and interest group politics.

The first book to tell the story of Freddie Mac from an insider perspective―even as casting a prophetic eye to the future―this first-hand account of housing policies, complex financial transactions, and the crazy quilt of federal and state actors involved in the Great Recession is a should-read. A cautionary tale of failed policies and corporate mismanagement that compellingly addresses in the past unexplored issues of political ideology, organizational dynamics, and ethics, Days of Slaughter will appeal to readers all over the place who want a fuller explanation of what went awry in the US housing market.


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