The Foreclosure of America: The Inside Story of the Rise and Fall of Countrywide Home Loans, the Mortgage Crisis, and the Default of the American Dream

Adam Michaelson was a marketing executive at Countrywide Financial, the largest American mortgage originator before its collapse, and wrote this account from inside the company.

His perspective is unusual: he worked on the marketing of the products rather than on their underwriting or funding, and the book describes how the loans were sold. He covers the pay-option adjustable rate mortgage, which allowed borrowers to make payments smaller than the accruing interest so that the balance grew, and describes the internal discussions about how to market it. He describes the growth targets, the market share objective that Angelo Mozilo set, and the competitive dynamic in which Countrywide matched whatever underwriting standards its competitors abandoned.

Michaelson is candid that he participated and that he raised concerns only weakly, and he writes about the internal culture in which questioning the products was career-limiting. The book is a memoir rather than an investigation and does not cover the funding structure, the securitisation, the regulatory position or the legal aftermath in any depth. Readers wanting those should go elsewhere, including to Michael Hudson's The Monster and to the Securities and Exchange Commission's case against Mozilo. Its value is the account of how these products were presented to borrowers and to the sales force.