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(More customer reviews)On a forum such as Amazon, book readers are free to write whatever reviews they like; but when they completely miss the point, throw in quotes out of context, and mistakenly ignore important sources of data used in a book, authors feel compelled to respond. In response to the review and exchange by "nycreader1", we suggest that readers should consider our clarifications below and also look at what we believe are more balanced and accurate book reviews provided in the Financial Times and Bloomberg:
[...]
The title "Guaranteed to Fail" refers to the fact that the GSEs took on the credit risk of almost 50% of the mortgage market with very little capital. It is also an intended pun as they were for all practical purposes guaranteed by the government.
With respect to the reviewer ("nycreader1")'s points concerning gaps and omissions, we beg to differ:
(1) The fact that the GSE mortgages were higher quality than others is discussed in the book, but unfortunately those mortgages were not sufficiently high given that the GSEs held less capital (much higher leverage), as confirmed by their eventually facing losses in the range of (at least) $200 billion.
(2) The government-sponsored hedge fund reference is only meant to describe their risk taking, with the focus on "government-sponsored" not just on hedge fund, nor to say that they were actually organized as a hedge fund. Their extensive use of derivatives to hedge some of their interest rate risk is consistent with that terminology.
(3) The reviewer's comment on interest rate risk is taken out of context. The book explains how analysts and academics missed the boat by not focusing on the credit risk of the GSEs' holdings and guarantees -- i.e., by not realizing that the mortgages were not sufficiently safe relative to the GSEs' (far too thin) capital levels.
(4) Our reference to the accounting scandals is made in passing and is used just to explain why their mortgage portfolios didn't grow. We are unsure why these scandals should be necessarily have been called "frauds". More importantly, we do make a compelling case that there were portfolio and leverage issues at the GSEs even post-accounting scandals.
(5) We do describe the GSE loan performance. The data used are primarily those of Fannie and Freddie themselves, and their regulator (the FHFA). We in fact went to great lengths to ensure our conclusions were consistent with their own data. We don't "rely" on Pinto's data (which the reviewer claims in a response to a comment) but offer it only as corroborative evidence (see pp. 37-38).
Of course, we had to rate the book to post this review and we have rated it as 5-star, but the point was to convey that we have researched hard on the GSEs before putting this book out,
unlike what the review by nycreader1 (mistakenly) asserts.
- Viral Acharya, Matthew Richardson, Stijn van Nieuwerburgh and Lawrence J. White, authors of Guaranteed to Fail
Click Here to see more reviews about: Guaranteed to Fail: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Debacle of Mortgage Finance
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