My college classmate Edmund Andrews, who covers the Fed for the New York Times, has written a brave, honest and surprising first-person account of how one of the top economics reporters in the country got himself into the position of defaulting on his mortgage and putting himself and his wife at risk of foreclosure.

There have been many stories about mortgage customers who made bad decisions, but few as unflinching as this one. When reporters interview mortgage "victims," aspects of the story are almost always left out. Exactly how much did the borrower make in income? How much did he/she spend on vacations and other discretionary items that could have gone to the mortgage payment? How bad were the fights with the spouse? Reporters, pressed by deadlines and grateful that unwise borrowers are willing to share any of their experience, are often reluctant to ask hard questions. When asked, interviewees often clam up.

Acting as both interviewer and interviewee, Andrews has gone into the gory details. He has written a book, Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown, about his still-unfolding nightmare. The book is excerpted in this Sunday's Times magazine. You can advance-order it on Amazon. It sounds like he could use the dough.

But in 2004, I joined millions of otherwise-sane Americans in what we now know was a catastrophic binge on overpriced real estate and reckless mortgages. Nobody duped or hypnotized me. Like so many others — borrowers, lenders and the Wall Street dealmakers behind them — I just thought I could beat the odds. We all had our reasons. The brokers and dealmakers were scoring huge commissions. Ordinary homebuyers were stretching to get into first houses, or bigger houses, or better neighborhoods. Some were greedy, some were desperate and some were deceived.

As for me, I had two utterly compelling reasons for taking the plunge: the money was there, and I was in love.