Too Big to Fail

The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System--and Themselves

By: Andrew Ross Sorkin

Narrated by: William Hughes

Andrew Ross Sorkin's website

Andrew Ross Sorkin's interview on Charlie Rose

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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.

Critic reviews

"...comprehensive and chilling..."
-TIME

"...his action scenes are intimate and engaging..."
-The New Yorker

"Sorkin's prodigious reporting and lively writing put the reader in the room for some of the biggest-dollar conference calls in history. It's an entertaining book, brisk book...Sorkin skillfully captures the raucous enthusiasm and riotous greed that fueled this rational irrationality."
-The New York Times Book Review

"...brings the drama alive with unusual inside access and compelling detail...A deeply researched account of the financial meltdown."
-BusinessWeek

"...meticulously researched...told brilliantly. Other blow-by-blow accounts are in the works. It is hard to imagine them being this riveting."
-The Economist

"Sorkin's densely detailed and astonishing narrative of the epic financial crisis of 2008 is an extraordinary achievement that will be hard to surpass as the definitive account...as a dramatic close-up, his book is hard to beat."
-Financial Times

"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

History of the 2008 Reconstruction of Wall Street

This book is a detailed account of the fall of Lehman Brothers, the reorganization and mergers of Goldman-Sachs, Morgan-Stanley, Merrill-Lynch, Wachovia-Wells Fargo, the genesis of the TARP fund, and the nationalization of the banks. The story gives the listener the sense of the desperation and breakneck pace of the total reorganization of Wall Street and US National Banking. The key protagonists in this history-memoir are the Dartmouth alums Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner who were facing down what they thought was an imminent economic collapse and the pressure points they used to avert the disaster. If there is any one lesson from this, it is that the fall of Lehman was mostly a matter of bad timing and the tension between Paulson and Fuld. The book does not seek to analyze the root economic causes of the fall of Wall Street other than excessive risk-taking and over-leveraging and does not provide the details of the accounting mischief like House of Cards and Smarted Guys in the Room. But the human story behind the deals is well depicted. It is a long but a compelling listen.

Loooooooooooong Story but still entertaining

22 hours of personal stories and minute-by-minute account of what happened from the collapse of bear stern to the TARP program. Lots of background stories about the participants and there's a loooot of them.
Let me list some issues and observations I have on the book:
- There's way too many characters and way too many details to a level that cast doubt on the author's ability to collect all that information. To his credit, he puts a disclaimer that some of the stories are sourced by only one source with no way to prove them. This makes the book a way to understand the circumstances of the crisis not to make a historical account of what actually happened.
- If you're new to characters, try to find pictures of them (which is available in the hard cover and the paperback)It helps remembering who is who.
- The book mentions nothing about what caused the crisis. This was a disappointment for me as I was looking forward for that part.
- The book gives a kind look at the heads of financial institutions that participated in the crisis, their history, their families, their short comings in their careers and lives. Sometimes it make them look like the people who were unfortunate enough to find themselves in the middle of a perfect storm and not the ones who caused it. Though at the very end, the book describes the executives insistence on avoiding limit on bounces and reveal that the true intension of quickly paying back the TARP money is actually their desire to access their bounces, it generally gives executives a favorable treatment as people who are racing to save the financial system.
- One of the things that struck me is the ease with which people on such high level managing huge financial institutions deal with important decisions. The number of possible merges between huge companies is big. Meetings over the weekend, phone calls to ask "Do you want to buy JP Morgan/Lehman Brothers/etc.?". It just amazes me.
Read the book but don't count it as the only account on what happened, it's only one version of the story. The story of what happened, not what caused the crisis and who's to blame.

Spectacular

An eye opening history of how Wall Street went haywire, leading to the 2098 collapse.

Well Researched....

liked it.....very detailed... I recommend everyone should read this. To those who feel the government should not bail out the banks....

interesting how petty we all are....

Clearly mistakes were made and leverage ultimately killed not only families tied to large mortgages, but also idiot wall st fat cats, who thought historical models would produce stable future returns. Just like a generation who learned from the great depression the value of not wasting. This generation will hopefully learn financial responsibility. Probably not, but andrew ross sorkin has a good head on his shoulders and gives us an interesting look into the breakdown of a house of cards, known as the financial system.