Conservatives blame the mortgage giants (wrongly) for the financial crisis, and both parties want them dead. But to finish the job of financial reform without destroying the housing market and costing taxpayers billions, we need to let them live.
Bethany McLean
Bethany McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of Shaky Ground: The Strange Saga of the U.S. Mortgage Giants (Columbia Reports, 2015), from which this article is adapted.