New York

MANY on Wall Street have long argued that the banks did not generally break the law when they packaged shoddy mortgages and sold them to investors in the lead-up to the financial crisis of 2008.

But on Monday, in the starkest of terms, a federal judge dealt a strong blow to that version of history. She ruled that two banks had misled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in selling them mortgage bonds that contained numerous errors and misrepresentations.