Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves
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 secretMore 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 neverdisclosed 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. Less
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Kemper rated it really liked it
over 3 years ago
"The only problem with capitalism is all the capitalists.”
Herbert Hoover
There’s a school of thought out there that many, if not most, people buy into. It goes something like this: The U.S. government is full of a bunch of stupid bureaucrats who do nothing but pass restri. Read full review
Petra Eggs rated it it was amazing
about 2 years ago
What the financial crisis in the US essentially came down to was the bankers had the government balls in a nice tight wrench and if those balls got gangrene and dropped off, leaving the whole of the Western world without a banking system and the ensuing anarchy, they coul. Read full review
Hadrian rated it liked it
over 4 years ago
If anything else, this is an entertaining book. Big tough bankers swear and dick around like petty real-estate salesmen from a David Mamet play.
It's also a good history of part of the 2007-2009 recession, specifically the collapse and restructuring of the investment banki. Read full review
Lobstergirl rated it liked it
almost 6 years ago
The strength of Sorkin’s book, which covers the period right after the fall of Bear Stearns (March 2008), up to the TARP infusions of capital (October 2008), is that he synthesized masses of detailed information and assembled it into a chronological story, using multiple. Read full review
Mahlon rated it really liked it
In Too Big to Fail Andrew Ross Sorkin achieved the impossible, he made the 2008 financial crisis accessible to a wide variety of readers. His tightly woven and meticulously researched narrative feels like a movie script, which is why it is no surprise that it eventually b. Read full review
Kerry rated it did not like it
over 5 years ago
I don't know if it's fair to rate the book based on the first few chapters that I read, but I know that my rating is going to be the same IF I did finish it. I just can't. This is NOT a book about the financial meltdown -- if you want something that explains the crisis, y. Read full review
AC rated it it was amazing
over 4 years ago
Finished -- I imagine this book would be a tough read, since it's pages literally crawl with minor characters -- bankers, minions of the armies of the night. but it makes a good listen -- Paulson comes off much better than Bernanke or Geithner -- and the author tries (a. Read full review
Ldrutman Drutman rated it it was ok
over 7 years ago
This was a book I felt like I had to read – 539 pages of the blow-by-blow of the financial crisis. Or at least what the crisis looked like from the top: It’s really the story of what the heads of the biggest financial firms were up to, and the federal regulators (mostly t. Read full review
Daiv Shorten rated it really liked it
about 5 years ago
For the lay person looking to learn the basics about the events that unfolded during the subprime mortgage crisis, I actually recommend the HBO original film based on this book ahead of the book itself. Whereas the movie had several illuminating scenes that put the events. Read full review
Kartik rated it it was amazing
over 6 years ago
The tag 'Master Storyteller', should be applied to Andrew Ross Sorkin for this piece of work. It has been a while since a book captured my attention so well as this one did.
Sorkin is able to cover the 'history' of the financial crisis in a good amount of depth, switch bac. Read full review
Hardcover. 600 pages
Published October 20th 2009 by Viking (first published 2008
ISBN 0670021253 (ISBN13: 9780670021253 ) Edition Language English Original Title Too Big to Fail The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis - and Lost Literary Awards Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year, Spear's Book Award, Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction
About this Author
Andrew Ross Sorkin is The New York Timess chief mergers and acquisitions reporter and a columnist. Mr. Sorkin, a leading voice about Wall Street and corporate America, is also the editor of DealBook (nytimes.com/dealbook ), an online daily financial report he started in 2001. In addition, Mr. Sorkin is an assistant editor of business and finance news, helping guide and shape the papers coverage.
While the financial crisis destroyed careers and reputations, and left many more bruised and battered, it also left the survivors with a genuine sense of invulnerability at having made it back from the brink. Still missing in the current environment is a genuine sense of humility.
There are no atheists in foxholes or ideologues in a financial crisis. Ben Bernanke
Everyone thinks Goldman is so fucking smart,” he railed. “Just because Goldman says this is the right valuation, you shouldn’t assume it’s correct just because Goldman said it. My brother works at Goldman, and he’s an idiot!