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

Credit default swaps on the debt sold by Fannie and Freddie—essentially, insurance—were trading at levels reserved for companies with credit ratings five levels below their own triple-A ratings, the highest a company could have. Those ratings were, in fact, more a reflection of the government’s implicit backing than the companies’ own fundamentals.