Days of Slaughter
Inside the Fall of Freddie Mac and Why It Could Happen AgainAbout the book
Days of Slaughter
Inside the Fall of Freddie Mac and Why It Could Happen Again
In September 2008, beset by mounting losses on high-risk mortgages and mortgage securities, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation teetered on the brink of insolvency. Fearing that confidence in the housing market would collapse completely if Freddie Mac and its competitor Fannie Mae failed, the US government placed the two firms into conservatorship. Freddie’s fall at the start of the financial crisis set off shockwaves around the world.
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. Gates relates the fateful decisions that led to Freddie Mac’s downfall and desperate rescue . She argues that many of the factors leading to the crisis remain unresolved.
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 cautionary tale. Addressing previously unexplored issues of political ideology, organizational dynamics, and ethics, Days of Slaughter provides a sobering assessment of what went awry in the US housing market.
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What people are saying…
“September 2018 marks the 10th anniversary of the federal government’s placement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship. Yet not that long before that, the U.S. secondary mortgage market was the envy of many countries, an example of how other nations should set up their own mortgage markets. For a generation prior to the federal takeover, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac provided an inexpensive and stable flow of funds to America’s homeowners. Days of Slaughter provides an insider’s view as to what were some economic, political, and management issues that led to the collapse of Freddie Mac.”
Summer Reading: Recommendations by Experts in Housing Markets, The Unassuming Economist
“Susan Wharton Gates was a 19-year veteran of Freddie Mac who departed shortly after conservatorship. Her treatise provides insights to the machinations, both within the walls of Freddie Mac and outside, that preceded the mortgage market crisis. Unique to her account, and what sets it apart from those of other authors, is her first-hand view of the events leading up to the demise of the privately owned GSEs.”
“This detailed, thoughtful examination of the GSEs before, during, and after the crisis is a welcome contribution to the historical record of a turbulent time.”
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