Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 624 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780670021253
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"Sorkin's book, like its author, is a phenom...an absolute tour de force."
-The American Prospect

"Andrew Ross Sorkin pens what may be the definitive history of the banking crisis."
-The Atlantic Monthly

"Andrew Ross Sorkin has written a fascinating, scene-by-scene saga of the eyeless trying to march the clueless through Great Depression II."
-Tom Wolfe

"...Sorkin has succeeded in writing the book of the crisis, with amazing levels of detail and access."
-Reuters

"Sorkin can write. His storytelling makes "Liar's Poker" look like a children's book."
-SNL Financial

About the Author
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the award-winning chief mergers and acquisitions reporter for The New York Times, a columnist, and assistant editor of business and finance news. He is also the editor and founder of DealBook, an online daily financial report. He has won a Gerald Loeb Award, the highest honor in business journalism, and a Society of American Business Editors and Writers Award. In 2007, the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader.

Customer Reviews

Well Reported and Well Written
The author has done remarkable research and has composed it into a highly readable account of the 2008 Financial Panic.

What surprised me was the extent to which the likes Paulson, Geithner, people at Goldman Sachs knew in early Spring that the dominoes had lined up and yet in a sense couldn't stop them from toppling. Conventional wisdom until now has been that Paulson & Bernanke were unprepared & totally blindsided by the sudden loss of confidence in September. Sorkin writes this was untrue, he has furnished a memo written by Neel Kashkari in early APRIL outlining a last-ditch "Break the glass" plan that later came out to be.....TARP!.

He also gives you an hour-by-hour account of that fateful week in Sept by telling the story of all the players. What would amaze you, is the sheer number of merger combinations that were attempted but didn;t succeed. Like JP Morgan buying Morgan Stanley for $1 a share, or Goldman merging with Citi, Paulson trying to entice Lewis to buy Lehman.

Its fascinating as to how little time Geithner & Co. had to draw up a plan to rescue AIG. It will leave you somewhat sympathetic to their decision to pay its counterparties 100 cents on the dollar. Which seems like a big mistake when considered in retrospect. As you might expect, AIG top management & FP division come across as clueless & insanely irresponsible.

Sorkin's tone throughout the book is objective and nuanced. He doesn't flatter anyone in particular. He lays out sufficient details and lets you form an impression of each of the players.

Simply a chronology
The book details the events, the people and the conversations that roiled the banks in 2008. The book does not really discuss why the events happened. If you're looking to understand why these banks fell, this is not the book to read.

The book is very readable and even at 539 pages, a person can finish it quickly. Another plus is that unlike most NY Times reporters, the author keeps most of his opinions out of the story until the last 2 pages.

His opinions are:

The government allowing Lehman to go into bankruptcy was the catalyst that caused the floodgates to open. This is probably why he spends a lot of the book developing the Lehman story.

He's ambivalent about whether the government players could have prevented the collapse of the banks or even if they did the right things when they did act. But he's quite clear that more banking regulation was needed then and is needed now.

One can disagree with his opinions, but he does well to leave most of them till the end of the book.

A few criticisms:

As mentioned, he does not discuss why exactly these events happened. In the epilogue, he briefly mentions 4 events that percolated over 10 years that conspired to cause the perfect storm in 2008. But he could have spent a chapter (prologue) describing these events and how they conspired to cause the problem. Apparently he's not a banker or an academic, so maybe he didn't feel qualified to do this.

Second criticism: In a few places prior to his epilogue, he lets us know his (negative) opinion of some players. It's obvious his disdain for Chris Cox and Sheila Bair. But he's particularly vitriolic towards the Wall Street Journal editorial page. I thought that as a chronicler, the author should have omitted his opinions of these people/institutions. Except for these incidents, he does largely keeps his opinions out of the manuscript until the last few pages.

Overall, a quick read that details the players and the chronology of events. If all you need is to understand the crisis, then this book should suffice.

A Real Page Turner
This is an excellent book that reads like something that Dan Brown might have written. But its real. The part that amazed me was the level of detail Sorkin was able to get about behind the scenes conversations that took place. Stuff about how people such as Dick Fuld of Lehman reacted to the problems when it was becoming clear that the company was going down and he was in denial. How Paulson was reacting to things when there were no rules about what to do.

But probably the most interesting parts were how the different personalities were reacting while the ground was shifting under them. At the peak, many of the people involved were literally working 24 hours a day highlighted by a phone call made to Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citibank at 3 am telling how a deal he made at midnight for Wachovia had instead been trumped by another and that that deal had already been signed and blessed by the government. How major decisions were being made on the run and how solid institutions became institutions on the brink in a matter of hours.

The book also explains how companies like Barclays and China Investment Corporation were working behind the scenes as well how Paulson, Geithener and others in the government were scrambling to keep things from collapsing. There is a lot of Monday Morning Quarterbacking going on and some of the things these people did may not have been the best, but they pulled it off and we should all be grateful.

But there some bad guys, namely the short sellers and as usual some in congress. The book makes clear that out of control short selling added fuel to the flames that were occurring and that when we were facing this emergency some members of Congress were focused on their own butt instead of doing what was needed.

There is a huge cast in this book and its is sometimes hard to keep the people and their roles straight, but make the effort. You will be rewarded.