For a look at many of the causes and key players that led to the 2008 financial crisis, see my previous book, written with Joe Nocera. All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis (Portfolio, 2010).
For a detailed history of Fannie Mae that explains the company’s controversial origins, written by Wall Street Journal reporter James R. Hagerty: The Fateful History of Fannie Mae: New Deal Birth to Mortgage Crisis Fall (The History Press, 2012).
On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System, by Henry Paulson (Business Plus, 2010). The former Treasury Secretary’s memoir of coping with the 2008 financial crisis, which begins with the takeover of Fannie and Freddie.
Hidden in Plain Sight: What Really Caused the World’s Worst Financial Crisis and Why It Could Happen Again, by Peter Wallison (Encounter Books, 2015). Wallison, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, argues that the affordable-housing goals that Congress required the GSEs to fulfill caused the financial crisis.
Sarah Lehman Quinn’s 2010 dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley, “Government Policy, Housing, and the Origins of Securitization, 1780–1968,” explains how federal housing policy has and hasn’t aligned with the federal government’s involvement in housing finance since the earliest days of the United States. You can read it here: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7sq3f6xk
In a March 2015 Federal Reserve Bank of New York staff report, four economists, W. Scott Frame, Andreas Fuster, Joseph Tracy, and James Vickery, analyze the decision to put Fannie and Freddie into conservatorship. It is called “The Rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” and you can read it here: http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr719.pdf
The Congressional Budget Office analyzes the various alternatives for a housing finance system in a 2014 report, “Transitioning to Alternative Structures for Housing Finance”: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/49765
“Housing Finance System: A Framework for Assessing Potential Changes,” October 2014. The U.S. Government Accountability Office weighs in on the challenges facing the housing finance system: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-131
“Assessing the Public Costs and Benefits of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.” The Congressional Budget Office issued a 1996 report that analyzed the amount of the subsidy Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac received via the government’s implicit guarantee of their debt and mortgage-backed securities. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011346201
The Mortgage Wars: Inside Fannie Mae, Big-Money Politics, and the Collapse of the American Dream, by Tim Howard (McGraw-Hill, 2013). The former chief financial officer of Fannie Mae offers his version of events.
Guaranteed to Fail: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Debacle of Mortgage Finance, by Viral V. Acharya, Matthew Richardson, Stijn van Nieuwerburgh, and Lawrence J. White (Princeton University Press, 2011). Four economists offer an academic view of the history of the GSEs and the causes of the crisis.
“Housing in the New Millennium: A Home Without Equity is Just a Rental with Debt.” In 2001, independent research analyst Joshua Rosner pointed out the brewing danger in the housing market long before the financial crisis erupted. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=11624s6