The basics. Introduction : What really caused the world's worst financial crisis and why it could happen again ; The difference between prime and nontraditional mortgages : the importance of sound underwriting standards ; The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission report and other explanations for the crisis : why conventional explanations for the crisis are inadequate ; A short history of housing finance in the U.S. : how and why housing finance was substantially changed in 1992 -- Government housing policies take effect. HUD's central role : how HUD used the affordable-housing goals to reduce underwriting standards ; The decline in underwriting standards : how the affordable-housing goals forced an increased in nontraditional mortgages ; Force fed : why the affordable-housing goals, and not market share or profit, were the sole reason the GSEs acquired nontraditional mortgages ; Going viral : why and how reduced underwriting standards spread to the wider market -- The financial crisis and its accelerants. The great housing price bubble : how loosened underwriting standards stimulated its growth ; Flying blind into a storm : how the GSEs' failure to disclose their acquisition of nontraditional mortgages magnified the crisis ; 31 million nontraditional mortgages precipitate a crisis : why even government=backed mortgage securities were contributors ; Fair-value accounting scales up the crisis : how mark-to-market accounting made financial firms look weak or unstable -- From bad to worse. From bad to worse : how government blunders turned a mortgage meltdown into an investor panic and financial crisis ; The false narrative and the future : why the failure to understand the causes of the crisis may lead to another.