Still want to blame the mortgage industry?

Since I first posted about Edmund Andrews' book, more information has come out about the author, namely that his second wife filed for bankruptcy, then a second time, almost as soon as she legally could.

Andrews has been admirably open about many of the poor decisions and the wishful thinking that led him deep into debt. Nonetheless, he has laid much of the blame onto irresponsible bankers and mortgage brokers. The missing bankruptcies substantially undermine this basic narrative arc of Andrews' story. Particularly in his book, the bankers are the villains, America's current troubles are the inevitable denouement of their maniacal greed, and the Andrews household stands in for an American public led, by their own greed and longing and hopeful trust, into the money pit.

It's hard to argue that Ms. Barreiro was forced into bankruptcy by crazed subprime mortgage lenders in 1998. Greedy bankers certainly didn't keep her and her first husband from paying their taxes.

Megan McArdle is keeping up with the story, and has Andrews' response, and a response of her own, in a later post.