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Professor Partnoy Analyzes Works About Economic Meltdown in "The New York Review of Books"

A regular contributor to The New York Times, University of San Diego School of Law’s George E. Barrett Professor of Law and Finance, Frank Partnoy, is a nationally recognized expert in the highly complex transactions that nearly resulted in the collapse of Wall Street.  On October 27 and again on November 10, Professor Partnoy and co-author Jeff Madrick, a former economics columnist for The New York Times and editor of Challenge Magazine, collaborated to review, discuss and rebut published works analyzing the 2008 economic meltdown in The New York Review of Books.

The first article, “Did Fannie Cause the Disaster,” is a review of the book Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon.

"In their new book, Reckless Endangerment, New York Times reporter Gretchen Morgensen and mortgage securities analyst Joshua Rosner…boldly and passionately assert that the risk-taking of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was a major element in causing the housing bubble. This bold claim, however, is not substantiated by persuasive analysis or by any hard evidence in the book…"

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In the second of the two articles published by The New York Review of Books, Partnoy and Madrick collaborated once again to explore the question, “Should Some Bankers Be Prosecuted?”

"Thus far, federal agencies have launched few serious lawsuits against the major financial firms that participated in the collapse, and not a single criminal charge has been filed against anyone at a major bank.  The federal government has been far more active in rescuing bankers than prosecuting them. The biggest SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] settlement thus far, alleging that Goldman Sachs misled investors about a complex mortgage product—telling investors to buy what had been conceived by some as a losing proposition—was for $550 million, a record of which the SEC has boasted.  But Goldman Sachs earned nearly 8.5 billion in 2010, the year of the settlement.  No high-level executives at Goldman were sued or fined, and only one junior banker at Goldman was charged with fraud, in a civil case."

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Professor Frank Partnoy is the George E. Barrett Professor of Law and Finance and the co-director of the Center for Corporate and Securities Law at the University of San Diego School of Law. He has appeared on news shows such as “60 Minutes,” “The Daily Show with John Stewart” and “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” as well as “Fresh Air” on National Public Radio. In addition, Professor Partnoy was featured in the Academy Award winning documentary “Inside Job,” the first film to expose the truth behind the economic crisis of 2008 that resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs.