--- title: How to Avoid the Next Credit Crisis Even If Politicians Won't description: Bethany McLean, best-selling chronicler of financial scandal and author of the new book Shaky Ground, explains how she protects herself from systemic meltdowns—and how you can, too. authors: - name: Rob Walker url: https://money.com/author/rob-walker/ at_money_since: 2015 articles: 2 covers: - Housing - Personal Finance former_staff: true published: '2015-11-09T16:36:49.000Z' modified: '2024-04-16T07:29:54.000Z' section: Housing tags: - 2008 financial crisis - mortgages - talking money word_count: 737 canonical: https://money.com/bethany-mclean-shaky-ground-fannie-freddie-talking-money/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![Bethany McLean](https://img.money.com/2015/11/151106_em_howidomoney_mclean.jpg) *Bethany McLean* *As co-author of best-sellers* All The Devils Are Here *and* The Smartest Guys In The Room*, journalist Bethany McLean unpacked the 2008 financial crises and the Enron scandal. Her new book* [Shaky Ground](http://www.amazon.com/Shaky-Ground-Strange-Mortgage-Giants/dp/0990976300) *scrutinizes Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—the mortgage giants that were supposed to be reformed but remain weird, public/private hybrid “government-supported entities.” McLean's books always focus on the big picture, but she offers some personal views, too, in the latest installment of “[Talking Money](https://money.com/tag/talking-money/).”* **Given that you’ve made a career of revealing financial malfeasance, do you basically trust no one? I’m picturing cash stuffed under the mattress.** \[*Laughs*.\] Honestly, it’s problematic as I get older. For many years I had so little money, I never had to worry about it. But now I’m almost 45, with children—and you do have to worry about it. I would say I’m phenomenally risk-averse. So it’s not like I’m publicly voicing pessimism but and secretly taking huge gambles on the market. I’m voicing pessimism—and terrified to do anything. \[*Laughs*.\] Really, I have a hard time being interested in anything involving my own money. Give me a financial statement for a company that’s incredibly complex, and I’m really happy and excited. Ask me to look at my own bank account and I have this shudder of horror. I just don’t, *don’t* want to deal with it. And yes, I do think my work has made that worse. I’m so aware of how much I don’t know, and how many conflicts of interest there are. **So what do you do at tax time, you just turn it over to an accountant and sign the paperwork?** I do. **I thought it would be intimidating to be Bethany McLean’s accountant.** As if I would be checking every line? \[*Laughs*\] No! No, no, no, no, no. When I was sharing an apartment with roommates, out of college, they would just go into my bag because they’d know there would be five-dollar bills, ten-dollar bills, kind of floating around. Not in a wallet — I didn’t own one. They would tell me; they weren’t stealing. But they all think it’s amusing that I’ve become someone who investigates money. I literally didn’t own a wallet until two years ago. **That’s crazy. Why?** \[*Laughs*\] I don’t know! Some sort of total aversion to organizing money – my own money. **Do you own stocks?** Mostly ETF and index funds, not individual stock positions. But beyond that I honestly don’t know what it is that I own. **And that’s partly a professional decision, to avoid conflicts?** It is. But if you told me I had to pour all the energy I dedicate to investigating companies and focus on managing my own money, I would find that utterly horrifying. I don’t have any interest applying what I learn to my financial life. Which frustrates my husband to no end. [***Shaky Ground***](http://globalreports.columbia.edu/books/shaky-ground/) **explains that Fannie and Freddie persist in a “conservatorship” structure that makes it unclear what might happen if there’s another financial/real estate rupture. I’m curious whether you own a house—and whether you’re personally worried?** We do own a house. For a long time I was perfectly happy to rent, but something happened—not a financial decision, more of an emotional one. Chicago, where we live, is a house-owning kind of place. So maybe it’s situation- and geographic-dependent for me. But I like the fact that this is my house. Here’s what scares me. Homeownership is way down since the financial crisis, and rental rates in a lot of places are skyrocketing. So we may have [an affordable housing crisis in the making](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/government-backed-mortgage-lenders-are-the-definition-of-too-big-to-fail-too-bad-we-need-them-more-than-ever/2015/10/15/781d3926-72bb-11e5-8248-98e0f5a2e830_story.html). My worst case is that we don’t focus and come up with a smart housing policy that addresses the status of Fannie of Freddie until there’s another crisis. We don’t want decision-making in a crisis. **It doesn’t sound like I should ask you for personal-finance tips, but got anything?** What caused the credit crisis was really the conflation of homeownership and credit creation—cash-out refinancing \[people borrowing against their homes\]. A healthy homeownership policy would disentangle those two things. If politicians aren’t going to do that, people should do it for themselves. If you are going to invest in a home, it’s a home. I remember seeing, after the financial crisis, this tattered banner advertising: “Let your home take you on vacation”—meaning borrow against your house for extra money. Resist! **READ MORE: [Talking Money with Podcasting Pioneer Roman Mars](https://money.com/roman-mars-podcasting-talking-money/)** ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/bethany-mclean-shaky-ground-fannie-freddie-talking-money/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Housing", "item": "https://money.com/housing/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Housing Market", "item": "https://money.com/housing-market/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "How to Avoid the Next Credit Crisis Even If Politicians Won't" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/bethany-mclean-shaky-ground-fannie-freddie-talking-money/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/bethany-mclean-shaky-ground-fannie-freddie-talking-money/", "name": "How to Avoid the Next Credit Crisis Even If Politicians Won't", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2015-11-09T16:36:49.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/bethany-mclean-shaky-ground-fannie-freddie-talking-money/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/bethany-mclean-shaky-ground-fannie-freddie-talking-money/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2024-04-16T07:29:54.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "How to Avoid the Next Credit Crisis Even If Politicians Won't", "articleSection": "Housing", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2015/11/151106_em_howidomoney_mclean.jpg", "width": 2100, "height": 1399, "caption": "151106_EM_HowIDoMoney_McLean" } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "Rob Walker", "url": "https://money.com/author/rob-walker/", "@id": "https://money.com/author/rob-walker/#author" } ], "publisher": "https://money.com/#organization", "datePublished": "2015-11-09T16:36:49.000Z", "description": "Bethany McLean, best-selling chronicler of financial scandal and author of the new book Shaky Ground, explains how she protects herself from systemic meltdowns—and how you can, too.", "abstract": "Bethany McLean, best-selling chronicler of financial scandal and author of the new book Shaky Ground, explains how she protects herself from systemic meltdowns—and how you can, too.", "@id": "https://money.com/bethany-mclean-shaky-ground-fannie-freddie-talking-money/", "inLanguage": "en-US", "dateModified": "2024-04-16T07:29:54.000Z", "wordCount": 737, "keywords": [ "2008 financial crisis", "mortgages", "talking money" ], "about": [ { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Housing in the United States", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_in_the_United_States" ] }, { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Housing market", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_market" ] } ] } ] } ```