Too Big to Fail

Too Big to Fail – Andrew Ross Sorkin

In September 2008, the global financial system came closer to collapse than at any time since the Great Depression. Over a few dramatic weeks, venerable Wall Street institutions failed, were sold or were rescued by the government, and the leaders of the nation’s largest banks and regulators worked around the clock to prevent catastrophe. In Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis and Themselves, New York Times journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin tells the story from the inside.

Based on hundreds of hours of interviews with participants, Sorkin reconstructs meetings, phone calls and negotiations in vivid detail. Readers follow Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and New York Fed president Timothy Geithner as they struggle to contain the crisis, along with the chief executives of firms such as Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and AIG.

The book covers the rescue of Bear Stearns, the agonizing weekend when Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail, the hurried sale of Merrill Lynch, the government’s rescue of AIG, the battles to save Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, and the creation of the bank rescue program that followed. Sorkin portrays the personalities, rivalries, egos and fears that shaped decisions with enormous consequences.

Gripping and detailed, Too Big to Fail reads like a thriller and was adapted into an HBO film. It is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand the 2008 financial crisis and how financial power works.