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There's an important new book out about our recent credit crises which is not to be missed: "Reckless Endangerment."

Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Gretchen Morgenson, and star housing finance analyst, Josh Rosner, the subtitle of this book says it all: "How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon." But Bill Moyers really captures the importance of this book:

"Even before Reckless Endangerment, Gretchen Morgenson was my nominee for Reporter of the Decade for her forensic and prophetic coverage of Wall Street. Now, she and the equally talented sleuth Joshua Rosner, like Holmes and Dr. Watson, have pieced together the clues to a seminal mystery of the financial debacle: how American taxpayers were suckered by the shenanigans, greed, egos, back scratching, and guile of financial and political elites who swarmed like vultures around Fannie Mae, picking it clean of oversight and accountability while its executives gorged themselves on the spoils. 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!"

All paths lead back to the beginning of this mess -- Fannie Mae. As Robert Reich recounts in his recent NY Times review:

The authors...deftly trace the beginnings of the collapse to the mid-1990s, when the Clinton administration called for a partnership between the private sector and Fannie and Freddie to encourage home buying. The mortgage agencies' government backing was, in effect, a valuable subsidy, which was used by Fannie’s C.E.O., James A. Johnson, to increase home ownership while enriching himself and other executives. A 1996 study by the Congressional Budget Office found that Fannie pocketed about a third of the subsidy rather than passing it on to homeowners. Over his nine years heading Fannie, Johnson personally took home roughly $100 million. His successor, Franklin D. Raines, was treated no less lavishly.

Reich continues:

To entrench Fannie's privileged position, Morgenson and Rosner write, Johnson and Raines channeled some of the profits to members of Congress -- contributing to campaigns and handing out patronage positions to relatives and former staff members. Fannie paid academics to do research showing the benefits of its activities and playing down the risks, and shrewdly organized bankers, real estate brokers and housing advocacy groups to lobby on its behalf. Essentially, taxpayers were unknowingly handing Fannie billions of dollars a year to finance a campaign of self-promotion and self-­protection. Morgenson and Rosner offer telling details, as when they describe how Lawrence Summers, then a deputy Treasury secretary, buried a department report recommending that Fannie and Freddie be privatized. A few years later, according to Morgenson and Rosner, Fannie hired Kenneth Starr, the former solicitor general and Whitewater investigator, who intimidated a member of Congress who had the temerity to ask how much the company was paying its top executives.

This important must-read book is essential to understand how we got ourselves into this housing crises and a guiding light to making sure we don't make the same mistakes again.

And to think it all started with the man pictured below, James Johnson, CEO of Fannie Mae from 1991-1998:

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