Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) has become the third House Republican discovered to have received a sweetheart loan as part of Countrywide’s “VIP” program. The program became notorious when conservatives jumped on the revelations that Democrats Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad received cheap loans through it. But it was always clear that influence peddling is a bipartisan sport in Washington, and it was inevitable that some Republicans would get found out.

Reckless Endangerment describes the players that helped create the housing bubble and bust that were at the heart of the financial crisis. Gretchen Morgenson and Josh Rosner focus on how regulators and other officials were complicit by promoting liberalized housing finance as a way to increase homeownership. Their account chronicles how a naïve vision of the American Dream, that of homeownership as the foundation of upward mobility and stable communities, turned into a nightmare in the hands of a growth driven and increasingly predatory mortgage complex.

In news that will not surprise you in the least — but will put you off your breakfast — Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo will not be charged.

Here’s an idea. Instead of retiring when we turn 65, let’s go to work scrubbing tables at the nearest fast-food outlet.

Sound good?

Not to most of us. But it’s a future that U.S. workers increasingly are facing. America’s workers aren’t just losing their homes in what is misleadingly termed the nation’s mortgage crisis.