Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

by Andrew Ross Sorkin

For months Paulson and his team had been discussing ways to unwind Fannie and Freddie should a real crisis hit—he considered their situation far more important to the long-term health of the economy than Lehman’s or the other investment banks’. But he knew it was all too easy to get bogged down in the political fighting over the controversial companies that had made home ownership a near right during the boom. With its critics insisting that Fannie and Freddie were neck-deep in the subprime mess, Paulson had a year earlier called the debate over Fannie and Freddie “the closest thing I’ve seen to a holy war.”