Daniel K. Fetter of Wellesley College reviews “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. The EconLit abstract of the reviewed work begins, “Explores the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the 2008 crisis of mortgage finance. Discusses what government-sponsored enterprises do; the dangers of the increasing credit risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac took on during the 1990s and early 2000s; a reduction of standards; systemic risk and the idea that the government-sponsored enterprises were too big to fail; the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; the Federal Reserve and what it can do; the housing finance systems of other countries; how to reform a broken system; and the economics of subsidizing home ownership. Acharya, Richardson, Van Nieuwerburgh, and White are Professors in the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University. Index.”