Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street Free

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He won a Gerald Loeb Award, the highest honor in business journalism, in for breaking news. Sorkin began writing for The Times in under unusual circumstances: he hadnt yet graduated from high school. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. 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 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. Through unprecedented access Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street the players involved, Too Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street 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. Get A Copy. Hardcoverpages. More Details Original Title. Other Editions 5. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Too Big to Failplease sign up. This book makes the case that without government bailouts, our economy would go into full out disaster mode. Grant Joslin That doesn't become a question just because you followed it with "Comments? See 1 question about Too Big to Fail…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Aug 25, Kemper rated it Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street liked it Shelves:non-fictionpoliticsbidness. It goes something like this: The U. To do anything else is socialism! For the most part, a large business is made up of a bunch of short sighted people who will cut their own throats in the long term if it means making money next quarter. Bear Stearns. Lehman Brothers. Where we really get into trouble is when these fucktards have been allowed to run amok, and then the chickens finally come home to roost. But no government regulation either! Yet after the first domino fell, the panic that spread would end up with the U. This book does a great job of laying out the chaos and confusion that occurred and how we were all teetering on a brink that could have been far worse in A couple of things especially stuck out to me. When the Lehman Brothers execs realized that there would be no government bail out of them, several of them gave angry speeches denouncing the government for not doing more. Oh, the irony. The other thing that made me scratch my head was that these companies kept going back to billionaire Warren Buffet to try and get him to invest so they could raise capital. Buffett made a few half-hearted offers on things he thought he could turn a buck on. Late in the game, when TARP had been passed and the original plan was for the government to buy the toxic assets that were dragging down everyone, Buffet sent a letter to the secretary of the treasury where he laid out a plan that would have created a hybrid of a public and private company to buy up those assets, get a fair market value for them, take them off the troubled companies balance sheets and potentially provided a decent return on the tax payer money. The plan was shelved when it was decided to invest capital in the banks, but out of all the schemes hatched over those desperate days, it seems like one of the more plausible ones. All of these companies tried to beg money off him, but no one asked him if he had any ideas to get them out of the mess. Any takers? View all 17 comments. Jun 25, Petra-X rated it it was amazing. 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 couldn't care less because they were filthy rich anyway and would, personally, all of them be more than just all right. Skip to the last-but-two paragraph if you don't want the lead-up to how. How it works, in a simplified way the What the financial Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street 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 couldn't care less because they were filthy rich anyway and would, personally, all of them Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street more than just all right. How it works, in a simplified way the only way I can grasp it, financial pea-brain as I am and leaves out the part insurance companies played is that the banks use their money, our money, our deposits, to make money by lending it out as mortgages and business loans. They make money on Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street interest people have to pay for those loans. If the standards for getting a loan are pretty lax as they were at the time then a lot of people won't be able to repay their loans and the bank doesn't have the money, isn't earning interest but has a dud house that won't sell for a profitable amount or a bankrupt business. So the bank isn't making any money but in an effort to do so, it relaxes restrictions on getting a loan even more so even more people borrow money and fail to repay it in this depressed economy There is another arm to this banking scam business, that is investment, and here's where the big bucks come in. Investment bankers are always looking for good businesses where they can buy shares at a much lower price than they think they will rise to in the future, then they can sell them and realise a profit. Of course, there is always the risk they made a wrong judgement call and the shares fall in price and as they are on their way down they have to decide whether to stick with them and hold on to them and hope they will go up some time or get out with a reduced amount. Either way the bank is holding on to some pretty worthless stuff, like the houses that got foreclosed and won't sell for the value of the loan and the bankrupt businesses, or they've taken a loss on the shares either completely or close enough. So there you have it, whatever the banks did in a depressed economy they were losing money. If everyone were to go to their bank to withdraw all their money they couldn't as the banks have lost some of the money on those unwise deals, and have more locked up in loans and investments that might pay up Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street might also go belly-up. So some of the bigger investors seeing that Lehmans among other banks looked like they were full of bad debts and old houses and not much cash wanted their money out. On Wall Street, people took notice of big investors pulling their money out, and more people did, and started to look at the other banks most of whom were in exactly the same Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street. So these big investors were pulling their money out from everywhere and looking to the Far East and points South, North, East and West where the bankers had been more regulated by government and not allowed to carry on risking people's money to the degree there was no longer enough to pay people their money back. So the banks couldn't pay back the depositors their money, and like a pack of cards one after the other began to collapse. The next thing, the final thing really, was the fear that you and me and everyone else on your street would suddenly wake up and realise what was happening with the big Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street was happening to you too and be in the queue at their bank at 9 a. And the bank wouldn't have it. Can you imagine the scene? Smashed ATMs and rioting. Businesses would not pay their overnight deposits in the next night, everyone would demand to be paid in cash, shops would not accept credit cards, debit cards wouldn't work. There would be anarchy in the streets. And the government would fall. The US holds the principles of capitalism far too dear and always sees Communism when nationalisation and regulation of industries is debated, even when, as with the bankers it was obviously needed. So before a rescue package could be put together, they had to overcome the Fear of the Bogeyman. Once they did that, they could put together a financial package loaning the banks at very favourable terms, enough billions that everyone who wanted their money could get it and their would be enough left over to invest and hopefully restore the banks to their usual obscenely greedy profit-making. So now is the time for regulating the banks and how they spend these vast sums that are being loaned to them. But guess what? The bankers won't accept any meaningful regulation at all. Its fine by them if the banks collapse, they've all been drawing huge salaries and bonuses often in the millions. And knowing the collapse was coming Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street can be sure their money was holed up somewhere safe. So the government had a three way choice. One, let the banks collapse and the government along with it producing a Depression so major that it would reverberate around the world and make the depression of the 30s look like some minor thing that happened way back when. Two, call the bankers' bluff and bail out the banks and regulate their investments so that our homes, our small businesses and our money was safe by stopping the bankers risky behaviour this would have benefited the average person, you and me. Three, give in to the bankers, let them invest as they please make huge profits if they could and then awarding themselves multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses and throwing us, average Joes, to the pits. The investment bankers said if you put any restrictions on us, we will all leave, we will retire, we will go to other countries' banks, we will do as we please, but we will not work in any bank that restricts how we do our business, so we got you over a barrel, either you do it our way or no way. Hahaha Yep. By the balls. And the average Joe So the situation now is as it was, seven financial institutions control Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street banking system of the US and should they fail, well, read the book! If the country relies on manufacturing items people want - China, Germany, South Korea etc - then its in a much stronger situation. Sure it could be hard to raise money to buy raw materials and machinery if the banks go, but what they have sold and have to sell gives them cash coming in. Another note, you paid the bankers salaries and bonuses, you paid for their bail out when they did it wrong and you are paying through interest for their salaries and bonuses again. Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street

When Tim Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street York, began his run that morning along the southern tip of Manhattan and up the East River just after six, the sun had yet to come up. Eighty-five billion dollars was more than the annual budgets of Singapore and Taiwan combined; who could even begin to understand a figure of that size? Geithner hoped that the sum would be sufficient to rescue the insurance giant from bankruptcy—and that the financial crisis would finally be over. Plus: How did the economy get into this mess? Those ferries, freighted with office workers, gave him pause. This is what it was all about, he thought, the people who rise at dawn to go to their jobs, all of whom rely to some extent on the financial industry to help power the economy. Never mind the staggering numbers. Never mind the ruthless complexity of structured finance and derivatives, or the million-dollar bonuses of those who had made bad bets. This is what saving the financial industry is really about: protecting ordinary people with ordinary jobs. But as he passed the South Street Seaport and then went under the Brooklyn Bridge, he inadvertently began thinking about what fresh hell the day would bring. Due to disastrous bets on Lehman paper, the giant Reserve Primary Fund had broken the buck a day earlier, causing an investor run on the money-market funds. His stock had fallen 28 percent in a matter of hours on Tuesday, and he decided he needed to do something to turn it around. But the headline on The Wall Street Journal was gnawing at him: goldman, morgan now stand alone; fight on or fold? And as the futures markets were already indicating, his attempt to show strength and vitality had largely failed to impress. The question was: how much more could they afford to let go? And Morgan needed to keep paying out the money. It was essential in the midst of a crisis that the firm not display even the slightest sign of panic, or the entire franchise would be lost. Under normal circumstances, Mack, 63, was unflappable, but he was starting to come unwound. Paulson was seated in a chair in the corner, slouching, nervously tapping his stomach. He had a pained look on his face as he explained to his inner circle at Treasury that in just the past four hours the crisis had reached a new height, one he could compare only to the World Trade Center attacks, seven years earlier, almost to the week. While this time no lives may have been at stake, companies with century-long histories and hundreds of thousands of jobs lay in the balance. The Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street economy, he said, was on the verge of collapsing. Jeffrey Immelt, G. Paulson knew this was his financial panic. It had been six months between the implosions of Bear Stearns and Lehman, but if Morgan Stanley went down, probably no more than six hours would pass before Goldman did, too. The big banks would follow, and God only knew what might happen after that. And so Paulson stood in front of his staff in search of a holistic solution, a solution that would require intervention. He still hated the idea of bailouts, but now he knew he needed to succumb to the reality of the moment. Paulson was supposed to take part in a three p. With Morgan Stanley on the ropes, Paulson had been growing increasingly worried about Goldman, where he had worked for 30 years and where he was C. If Goldman were to topple, it would, he believed, represent a complete destruction of the system. Part of him regretted signing the original ethics letter agreeing not to get involved in any matter related to Goldman. Former Treasury secretary and Goldman C. Henry Paulson. Geithner had raised this very issue back in March after the Bear Stearns deal. Given the extreme situation in the market, Hoyt told Paulson he Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street it was only fair that he try to seek a waiver; Hoyt had in fact already drafted the material needed to request one. Hoyt reached out to Fred F. Fielding, counsel to the White House and a longtime Washington hand, who knew his way around the system, and to Bernard J. Knight Jr. Unknown to the public, Paulson was now officially free to help Goldman Sachs. Kevin Warsh, a year-old governor at the Federal Reserve, whose office was a few doors down from that of his boss, Ben Bernanke, was having his own worries over Morgan Stanley. He could tell that his former firm was quickly losing the confidence Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street the marketplace. To him, there was an obvious solution to its problems: Morgan Stanley needed to buy a large bank with deposits. His top choice? Wachovia, a commercial bank with a large deposit base that itself was struggling. Bob Steel and instructed him to call Mack in Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street minutes. He told me he thought we should connect. I think this could be the right time to talk. For Steel, a Morgan Stanley deal happened to be both commercially and personally attractive. After speaking with Steel, Mack called Robert Scully, his top deal-maker, and told him about the conversation. He agreed, however, that at this point no options could be automatically ruled out. Scully in turn called Rob Kindler, a vice-chairman. In the relatively straitlaced banker culture of Morgan Stanley, Kindler was an outlier—loud, indiscreetly blunt, and predisposed to threadbare old suits. Despite his idiosyncrasies, when it came to deal-making, his advice was highly valued. As the Wachovia due diligence got under way, Mack got a callback from Citigroup C. Pandit delivered what amounted to a soft no on the merger talks. Mack clicked off, exasperated. The rumors were flying: the latest gossip had the company as a trading partner with A. John Mack was meeting with his brain trust. They were market creatures, doing what they had to do to survive. Mack had just gotten off the phone with one of his closest friends, Arthur J. Mack believed negative speculation was purposely being spread by his rivals and repeated uncritically on CNBC. He encouraged his boss to start working the phones Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street Washington and impress upon them the need to put in place a ban on short-selling. Desperate for an ally, Mack contacted his most serious rival, Lloyd Blankfein, of Goldman. While the year-old Goldman C. Making little progress, Nides had another, perhaps shrewder, angle to play. Nides had a hunch that Cuomo might be willing to put a scare into the shorts. It was an easy populist message to get behind: Rich hedge-fund managers were betting against teetering banks amid a financial crisis. The panic at Goldman Sachs could no longer be denied. Schwartz, head of global-securities-division sales, who had a glass wall looking onto the trading floor. The door was left open; Cohn wanted to see and hear exactly what was going on. Investors were quickly beginning to believe the unthinkable: that Goldman, too, could falter. Cohn called him and tried to persuade him to return the money to the firm. Druckenmiller, however, was unmoved. It was strange. But he decided to stop guessing what Dimon might be up to and ask him directly. In his e- mail in-box was a message from one of his traders saying that JPMorgan was trying to steal his hedge-fund clients by telling everyone that Goldman was going under. It was becoming a vicious circle. Blankfein had been hearing these Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street for the past 24 hours, but he had finally had enough. He was furious. The rumormongering, he felt, had gotten out of control. He could feel himself becoming as anxious as Mack had sounded when they spoke the day before. He called Dimon, too. Did you say your guys would never do anything? While they are both formidable competitors, during this period, we do not want anyone approaching their clients or employees in a predatory way. No trading was taking place, and the traders themselves were glued to their terminals, staring at the GS ticker as the market continued its swoon. But just then, at one p. Traders raced through their screens trying to determine what had been responsible for the lift and discovered that the Financial Services Authority in the U. About three dozen traders stood up from their desks, placed their hands over their hearts, and sang aloud, accompanied by rounds of high-fives and cheers. Goldman Sachs C. Lloyd Blankfein. By Michelle V. At exactly p. Gary Cohn had been on the phone earlier in the day with Kevin Warsh at the Federal Reserve, brainstorming a way to get in front of the financial tsunami. Warsh had thrown out the idea that perhaps Goldman should be looking at a merger with Citigroup, a fit that could solve major problems for both parties. Goldman could get a huge deposit base, while Citigroup would acquire a management team that investors could support. Cohn expressed his doubts about the suggestion. Blankfein had always resisted the idea, however, because it came with a hefty price tag in the form of increased regulatory oversight. But these were extraordinary circumstances, to say the least, and the C. Ceneo - porównanie cen, sklepy, perfumy, agd, rtv, komputery

This website uses cookies to help us give you the best experience when you visit our website. By continuing to use this website, you consent to our use of these cookies. Paulson, wearing a suit "one size too big", congratulated Fuld on raising new capital for the bank. But the hedge funds were already circling. They did not believe the bank's financial statements, and within weeks one of them went public to say so. David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital told investors he hoped that Paulson would "guide Lehman towards recapitalisation and recognition of its losses. He didn't, and the rest is history. It draws on interviews with leading participants, many of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. The deep detail, drawn from multiple accounts and documents, is exemplified in the episode covered above. But so is the book's central flaw. We know the colour of Paulson's too-big suit and that Fuld "strode" up the steps of the treasury, but we don't know the truth about the Paulson-Fuld conversation. Nor do we know what Sorkin thinks really happened. We get copious detail, but no sustained analysis or judgement. Sorkin's book, with its expletive-laden anecdotes of how the rich and powerful behave under conditions of extreme stress, has fascinated the American public. It is written like a thriller, but, shorn of serious analysis, it remains a text Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street a subtext - and as all thriller writers know, if you do not write the subtext it Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street itself. The subtext I took away from this story of uncontrolled power is that the power is illusory. The "decision-makers" are only puppets, their strings pulled by wider social forces they do not understand. But this conclusion is at odds with the way Sorkin treats his subjects' evidence, which is always at face value. As Sorkin's story unfolds, we come to see that the official channels through which finance bosses are supposed to deal with each other, and with politicians and regulators, are merely for show. The really significant dealings are conducted through unofficial channels, and the key principle, especially for politicians, seems to be to keep the public uninformed. So, when a US treasury official phones the Barclays boss Bob Diamond to suggest the bank consider buying Lehman, it helps that the caller is "his friend Bob Steel". It helps, too, that this is "not official Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street, but "brainstorming". You could argue that this left the Barclays boss with market-sensitive information about a rival bank Diamond later picked up Lehman's investment arm for a song. It is just one of hundreds of examples Sorkin provides of the way business between supposedly "public" companies is really done. The Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism is supposed to be based on transparency, the level playing field and the rule of law. Too Big to Fail shows that much of this is an illusion. If Sorkin's account is accurate, secrecy and personal networks ran all the way through the worlds of politics, regulation, finance and financial journalism right up until the crisis hit. Once we understand this, we are able to see the mistakes and miscalculations of a man like Fuld not simply as personal failings, but as the product of a world where everything glitters but, by mid, almost nothing is actually gold. In a world based on friendship and networks of personal obligation, the real shock came when the backslapping turned to backstabbing. Sorkin's book is superb in the way it presents the critical moments of a modern financial crisis as points at which networks of influence fell apart. As real- world economic forces intrude into Fuld's personal universe, you can feel the confusion spread across the network, Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street politicians, regulators and stock-picking TV journalists. I have a friend I can call. As they ponder whether to try to get President Bush to phone Gordon Brown, the US policymakers realise that they have been, as Paulson puts it, "grin-fucked" by the British. That memorable phrase could be used to describe what every bank on Wall Street then does to its rivals: Bank of America pulls out of saving Lehman and saves Merrill Lynch instead; within days the traders of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan are knifing each other in the back even as the top bosses instruct them to desist "for the good of the financial system and the country". In the end, everybody grin-fucked everybody else, and the state had to bail out free-market finance. Sorkin describes how there had been a contingency plan to do exactly this, commissioned by Paulson as early as April The final part of the book tells the story of how that plan was thrown out by Congress, unleashing the systemic global banking crisis of early October Sorkin's attention to detail is sometimes overzealous. Too often, we are told which button of some great decision-maker's Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street was loose at the crucial moment, or that the gravel in the drive of Fuld's vast mansion "crackles" as he steps into his chauffer-driven limo. We are made privy to people's thoughts. But what we are never allowed to know is whether the author believes the thoughts and reminiscences those people have confided to him are accurate. He seldom allows himself to make any kind of synthetic judgement of his subjects. This, plus the book's scant analytical conclusions on the crisis as a whole, constitutes a substantial weakness, and encourages the idea that powerful men make history and seems to endorse its subjects' perpetual surprise that they have to operate in circumstances not of their own choosing. The deep, systemic problems stacked up by US banks in the 15 years of loose money that preceded the crisis are summarised in the first chapter, occasionally referred to, but almost never treated as relevant to the narrative Sorkin unfolds. Because of this, his characters themselves refuse to become three-dimensional: they exist like epic warriors on an Assyrian bas-relief, marching towards doom. And by the end of the story, when all the stabbing is over, the tributes paid and the prisoners either spared or executed, it is hard to care about the human beings depicted. Sorkin's book is a monumental piece of work and, thus far, the definitive account of the economic crisis from a Wall Street perspective. As a sourcebook illustrating the hubris, secrecy and psychosis that drive high finance, it is frightening. But as Sorkin's judgements on both the people and the system are so scant, we are left to make our own. His latest book is Clear Bright Future: A radical defence of the human being. Sign up. You are browsing in private mode. Show Hide image.