A real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in America’s financial history by an acclaimed New York Times Reporter
Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami. From inside the corner office at Lehman Brothers to secret meetings in South Korea, and the corridors of Washington, Too Big to Fail is the definitive story of the most powerful men and women in finance and politics grappling with success and failure, ego and greed, and, ultimately, the fate of the world’s economy.
“We’ve got to get some foam down on the runway!” a sleepless Timothy Geithner, the then-president of the Federal Reserve of New York, would tell Henry M. Paulson, the Treasury secretary, about the catastrophic crash the world’s financial system would experience.
Through unprecedented access to the players involved, Too Big to Fail re-creates all the drama and turmoil, revealing never disclosed details and elucidating how decisions made on Wall Street over the past decade sowed the seeds of the debacle. This true story is not just a look at banks that were “too big to fail,” it is a real-life thriller with a cast of bold-faced names who themselves thought they were too big to fail.
After reading two other well-publicized books on the real estate bubble and following market crash, I felt like I had been had. One book, primarily about Lehman, was shallow and written by an egotistical prima donna. The other was too technical and appeared to not have been edited well.
This book was written by a finanial author and is fair, thorough, and puts everything in perspective. It is well-written and flows for an easy read.
If you have any interest in financial history, this book belongs on your shelf along with other classics like When Genius Failed, Barbarians at the Gate, and the Smartest Guys in the Room. Ignore the poor ratings by those who were disappointed in the Kindle price. That is another issue.
writes,
When Vanity Fair magazine excerpted this book last month, I printed out the article and eagerly began reading. On page one, I realized I'd just wasted paper. The bottom of that page contained this incredible error in a description of Henry Paulson's worries at the depths of the financial crisis:
"...Treasury bills were trading for under 1 percent interest, as if they were no better than cash, as if the full faith of the government had suddenly become meaningless."
The identical phrase is also found on page 425 of this book.
For the uninitiated, the fact that Treasury yields had fallen to less than 1 percent was a sign that government debt was seen as a safe haven -- that the full faith of the government had suddenly become the _only_ thing that was meaningful during the crisis. As money piled into Treasuries, their yields fell, reflecting their safety.
This is not an incidental bit of trivia. The fact that the federal government can continue to borrow very cheaply has been a very lucky break for the United States, allowing us to fund things like bailouts and fiscal stimulus instead of imposing austerity as other countries in similar situations are usually forced to do.
Economist Dean Baker and many others have expressed their bafflement at Sorkin's misunderstanding here. It's hard to believe it's an editing error, and Sorkin has written some other howlers in the New York Times. The most likely explanation is that he doesn't understand the relationship of yields to prices for bonds, and for a financial reporter for a major newspaper, this is appalling.
writes,
I have read many books on last year's economic crisis, and this book if not the best is certainly one of them. It is a well-written description on literally a day to day basis of the events in NYC and DC that changed our economic landscape forever. The book allows us to know the thoughts of many of the major participants and details the reasons for the actions taken, and shows us how close we came to an economic collapse. I strongly recommend it. Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System---and Themselves
