Another Big Lie

Book excerpt: In his book, Another Big Lie, author Tim Pagliara details the decade-long fight over the government's role in regulating a safe and sound mortgage market. At the heart of the story is the contrarian bet investors made to buy Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--government sponsored entities, GSEs--securities in the heat of the mortgage crisis in late 2008. This is the story of how a select group of GSE investors exposed the government's theft of billions of dollars from the American dream of homeownership. Madison opined in the Federalist papers that "If Men were Angels" we wouldn't need government. And yet, in Another Big Lie, Pagliara examines what happens when all three branches of government--executive, legislative, and judicial--fail, exposing the truth about the housing market, a corrupt legislative process in the Senate, and the various attempts that tried and failed to blame the financial crisis on the GSEs.