Movies are supposed to be cultural entertainment not cultural history. Unfortunately, too many people get their history from movies and fictional shows on television, especially when it comes to complicated topics like finance.

The latest installment of entertainment/history is a movie called “The Big Short” which presumably tells the story of the housing crisis and the financial collapse. Like all good fiction, the story hinges on just a small percentage of facts that led to the crisis and runs with it. The movie pretty much places the blame for the crisis on investment bankers, even disclosing the names of major financial institutions at the end of the movie. However, the substantial responsibility for the crisis lies elsewhere and is a lot more complicated than the film would have you believe.

As I’ve report many times in this column, the majority of residential home mortgages are backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The loans these quasi government agencies provide are guaranteed by the United States government, i.e. you and I, and therefore take their orders from Congress.

Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, these two agencies, influenced and legally mandated by Congress, started liberalizing the underwriting requirements criteria for qualifying for a home mortgage. Naturally, this gave mortgage lenders the ability to make mortgage loans to potential buyers who otherwise wouldn’t have qualified.

The Wall Street investment banks came in and securitized the loans and sold them on the world-wide market, and when the subprime loans, remember that word, failed, the pyramid collapsed, and the American taxpayer was left holding the bag. So as you can see there was plenty of blame to go around starting with our own Congress which, in the name of fairness, made some pretty bad decisions.

Now its 2016, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not only still with us, but under the supervision of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, are growing. The latest innovation is designed to remove some of the risk that can be passed on to taxpayers in the form of financial instruments that transfers some of the cost of defaults on to the investors. This is essentially an insurance policy for Fannie and Freddie and a way for them to continue backing risky mortgage loans.

Isn’t this sort of like buying extra liability insurance because you like to drive 100 miles an hour and want to be protected? Maybe a better choice would be to stop driving so fast, and you won’t need the insurance. Likewise, maybe a better choice for the American taxpayer is for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to just stop holding risky mortgages in the first place. And don’t forget the agencies are still backed by the federal government so the new “Connecticut Avenue Securities,” which claims to reduce the government’s participation in the mortgage market, could someday be looking for a bail out.

Far be it from me to pretend to know everything about our banking and financial structure. However, I know enough to know what I don’t know, and although I may not totally get the infrastructure of selling short and securitized loans, I do know the danger of granting mortgages to buyers who will have a problem meeting their monthly payment. I long for the good old days of movies like “Love Story” that you could at least understand.