Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System---and Themselves |
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| Title: | Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System---and Themselves |
| Author: | Andrew Ross Sorkin |
| Publisher: | Viking Adult |
| Type: | Book / Hardcover |
| Publication Date: | 20 October, 2009 |
| ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0670021253 / 9780670021253 |
| List Price: | $32.95 |
| You Save: | $11.20 |
| Amazon Price: | $21.75 |
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Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
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.
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Customer Reviews:
• A Bit Linear At Times
24 July, 2010
As of this writing, there are 197 reviews of Mr. Sorkin's book on Amazon, most of them rightly praiseful. This is certainly deserved as the book is a great read, obviously based on thorough research and clearly referring to a great number of interviews with the key players. The kind of language these highly paid executives sometimes use in their daily pursuits will surprise only those who have never met any of them and Mr. Sorkin shows no mercy when dealing with their failures of weaknesses. European readers will thoroughly enjoy this description of Wall Street's digestive system functioning at its worst with accompanying smells and noises but with all the details and the entertaining characters so well brought to life by Mr. Sorkin's well written prose, there is a risk of getting lost and suddenly wondering who does what for which purpose. That of course does not apply to the main players trying to save the system - Paulson, Bernanke, Geithner et al. - but at times one wishes for a chapter looking at the problem other than through a purely American perspective. For instance, the English government's belly dancing in the matter of Barclays' ultimately futile attempt to acquire Lehman before bankruptcy is only mentioned "en passant" and not much is said about other central bankers. The Chinese seem to come in only as pals of Hank Paulson and more would have been expected. Admittedly, Mr. Sorkin could not have written an entire history of the world at the time and his book is superb as it is, yet only if one wishes to know the minutiae of what happened in the United States, which, as we all know, is of course the center of the universe.....
- Amazon Customer Review
• Inside
20 July, 2010
There's no shortage of books about the current financial crisis. Contrary to my usual brisk reading pace, I found myself slowing down to savor the 600+ pages of Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big to Fail. This finely written book reveals the inside story: specific details about people and meetings that bring the players and policies to life. This is the work of a skilled journalist with many sources, and the perspective to pull all the pieces together into a play-by-play narrative that made me feel like I was in the room as he describes what happened.
Rating: Four-star (Highly Recommended)
- Amazon Customer Review
• Ok, If You Want Only The Middle Of The Story
29 July, 2010
Too Big To Fail is a big book, which juicy portraits of all the principal characters who wrecked the world economy and those few that tried to prevent it from falling off a cliff (although even a couple years later, we're still perched on the edge). Everyone comes off badly, and no one seems particularly smart, heroic, or tragic; rather, everyone seems like a character from an episode of The Sopranos. The book starts without much prelude; in fact, it launches into the crisis AFTER the Bear Stearns bail-out. The book ends after Treasury forces a capital infusion in the 9 largest banks and broker-dealers, which signaled a calming of the markets but did nothing to deal with all the toxic assets the banks held (a problem later dealt with in a temporary way by Bernanke's "quantitative easing" program, not covered in the book). The much heralded TARP turned out to be an idiotic idea. Sorkin focuses on the banks and broker-dealers, but generally ignores what everyone else (including hedge funds, rating agencies, and the Fed) did during the crisis. The actions of Tim Geitner and the New York Federal Reserve certainly require more scrutiny, but you won't find much in Sorkin's book. Should Lehman have been bailed out? Given that every other financial institution was bailed out, it sure seems so. A few days after Lehman filed bankruptcy, Paulson and Geitner orchestrated the bailout of AIG, an insurance company, the cost of which would later exceed $180 billion.
- Amazon Customer Review
• Detailed Play By Play Needs More Analysis
29 July, 2010
I'll echo the comments of many of the other mediocre reviews here. This book is an amazingly detailed play-by-play report of the weeks around the bankruptcy of Lehman and the various mergers, bailouts, rescue plans and all the rest. If you want to know what Dick Fuld ate for breakfast the day Lehman filed for bankruptcy, it's probably in here, as are the details of phone call after phone call, various merger meetings, etc.
What's not in here is any detailed analysis of why all these companies ended up where they were. This is especially noticeable when he discusses AIG- you get a few pages talking about how every time someone looks at the books their situation seems worse, but how AIG ended up holding the hot potato (and why it was uniquely able to take on massive risk without affecting its credit rating) is cursory at best and missing at worst. There's virtually no real discussion of Moodys and the other rating agencies and *why* they rated toxic assets as AAA, the real lynchpin of the entire failure.
This also tends to lend a too sympathetic air to the treatment of the companies, the CEOs and the various people in the federal government and reserve banks- Sorkin's book has a tendency to treat them as folks heroically scrambling to find any way to save their poor beleaguered firms. A detailed analysis would show the string of awful decisions by a host of folks who should have seen it coming- this wasn't a natural disaster, it was a planned event, carefully sculpted by people who thought they were far smarter than they actually were.
- Amazon Customer Review
• Entertaining Read And Also A Frightening Expose
18 July, 2010
I could not put this book down. It grabs you from the first page. There are countless characters: all egomaniacal, including those who want to do what's "right". Sorkin provides frightening insight into the slap dash manner in which world altering decisions are made by a group of overpaid, overtired, unaccountable, and not necessarily logical, people. I finished the book feeling nauseated by the compensation deals the big bankers set for themselves....they should be brought to task for their indescribable greed and criminal sense of entitlement. The book also mocks, perhaps unintentionally, the ineptitude and herd mentality of most corporate boards. This is an eye opening book which should be read by anyone interested in learning how back door deals are made. I'm a responsible law abiding business owner, and this book makes me really question the morality and intent of our business "leaders", both private and public.
Los Angeles
- Amazon Customer Review
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