Reckless Endangerment

How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon

By: Gretchen Morgenson, Joshua Rosner

Narrated by: L. J. Ganser

The New York Times' 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 watchdogs who were supposed to protect the country from financial harm were actually complicit in the actions that finally blew up the American economy.

Drawing on previously untapped sources and building on original research from coauthor Joshua Rosner, who himself raised early warnings with the public and investors, and kept detailed records, Morgenson connects the dots that led to this fiasco.

Morgenson and Rosner draw back the curtain on Fannie Mae, the mortgage-finance giant that grew, with the support of the Clinton administration, through the 1990s, becoming a major opponent of government oversight even as it was benefiting from public subsidies. They expose the role played not only by Fannie Mae executives but also by enablers at Countrywide Financial, Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, HUD, Congress, the FDIC, and the biggest players on Wall Street, to show how greed, aggression, and fear led countless officials to ignore warning signs of an imminent disaster. Character-rich and definitive in its analysis, this is the one account of the financial crisis you must hear.

©2011 Gretchen Morgenson & Joshua Rosner (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Naming names and taking no prisoners, they drill deep into one of the most disturbing scandals of our time, perpetrated in the name of helping "the little guy." Read it and weep. Read it and vow: Never Again! (Bill Moyers)

So informative

This book is so informative, though the substance is infuriating and unbelievable. I am glad that I listened; reading it would have been difficult for me. I liked the performance, feeling a bit comfortable with the voice having realized that he also narrated In The Plex, which I also enjoyed.

Very informative. Cleared up a lot for me

While this was not a typical story, it was very interesting and kept my attention all the way through. It cleared up a lot of confused spots in my mind about exactly what happened durring this time.

Reckless Endangerment

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Well written and read. Reveals history of the 2007-8 real estate collapse in detail exposing the people in power and how they used it to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. Nobody has gone to jail and those involved really think they did nothing wrong.

If you could give Reckless Endangerment a new subtitle, what would it be?

They Robbed the Bank and Nobody Went to Jail

Good story, felt somewhat biased

What did you love best about Reckless Endangerment?

Reckless Endangerment was an interesting overview of how we find ourselves in our recent financial crisis (at least with respect to issues in the United States). The authors do a nice job of tying individual events of the last twenty years and how they led, foreseeably to our current situation. Overall I enjoyed this book though it felt at times less of an historic review and more of an editorial.

What did you like best about this story?

Great overview of recent financial events.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No, but I don't think that at all harmed my opinion of the book.

Any additional comments?

Overall, an enjoyable book though the perspective felt a bit slanted at times.

We Shudda Saw it Comin'

This is a worthwhile read for those of us who brood over the meltdown of 2008. It’s written for people who are not stupid but not well informed about the dodges of high finance. Admittedly, a few bank/government machinations are difficult to follow in the text, so that a reader must back up a bit and re-read, but that does not happen often; the authors set most of it down in clear English. They explain “derivatives” formulas well, when they pop up, so even I can understand them. The text begins in the 1980s, works its way forward, dumb move by dumb move, enabler legislation by enabler legislation, to the day when seawater floods over the gunnels of gigantic economic ships and they plummet to the ocean’s bottom. The books contention is that business and government manufactured their own submerged mines—out of greed, power and influence, ideologies, and bureaucratic ineptitude—strewing them as they went because it gained them political advantage and (in the case of the finance boys) because they just didn’t give a damn in their rush to make millions. Sound familiar? Ecce Americanus. Financial “wizards” and Washingtonian “public servants” played paddy-cake and you-scratch-my-back for twenty years before the fleet sank. The mines didn’t go off until the original ships’ officers were safe, dry, retired, and very rich. The crew drown, of course. God bless you Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barney Frank, and James A. Johnson. May history give it to you up the wazzu, like the events you precipitated did to so many of us.