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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

4.14 · Rating details · 35,694 ratings · 1,405 reviews

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 ...more

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Hardcover, 600 pages

Published October 20th 2009 by Viking

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All the Devils are Here by Bethany McLean

Understanding the Financial Crisis 2008

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Start your review of Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

Aug 25, 2011 Kemper rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2011, politics, non-fiction, bidness

"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 restrictive laws that keep businesses from making money and prevent the growth of the economy. Obviously, the businesses should be allowed to do their thing with no government interference because they know what’s best, and if they sh "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 restrictive laws that keep businesses from making money and prevent the growth of the economy. Obviously, the businesses should be allowed to do their thing with no government interference because they know what’s best, and if they should happen to step on their dicks, then they should just fail without the government trying to save them. To do anything else is socialism!

That’s a nice theory, but there’s a huge flaw with it. 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. Don’t believe that? Enron. Worldcom. Tyco. AIG. Bear Stearns. Lehman Brothers. Etc. Etc. In 2001 and 2008 we saw what happens when someone doesn’t keep a close eye on the companies chasing the quick buck, and the accounting fraud of 2001 was only about ten years after the savings and loan scandals that cost the U.S. around $120 billion.

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. That’s when Joe or Jane Taxpayer, who a few years earlier were sitting there grumbling about the damn guvment keeping the businesses from earning an honest buck, will lose their goddamn minds over the possibility of the government providing cash to these companies to keep the entire economy from going into a death spin. They’d rather see their 401K shrink to a $1.76 rather than let those greedy bastards get a dime of taxpayer money! But no government regulation either!

So rather than holding our noses and spending $50 billion dollars to save Lehman Brothers and AIG and shore up a few other companies and then passing some sensible regulations to keep it from happening again, the government, fearing what Joe or Jane would say, tried to force a private sector solution and ultimately let Lehman go into bankruptcy. Yet after the first domino fell, the panic that spread would end up with the U.S. spending over $750 billion to try and stop another Great Depression.

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 2008. Most of the book is just a straight retelling of the events with what the major players were thinking and what they did, but there’s a nice summary at the end that lays out what the author thinks about how it played out and does a fair job of assigning some blame.

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. I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume that a top executive at Lehman Brothers had probably been a hard core guvment-sux Republican up until the point they didn’t get a check. 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. Buffet even pledged to invest $100 million of his own money and help administer it. 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.

So why in the name of Alexander Hamilton didn’t anyone ask Warren Buffett for a plan earlier? They all knew he’d been too smart to get involved in the mess that was dragging them all down. (One reading of a Lehman Brothers stock report that the industry had praised just weeks earlier convinced Buffett that he wouldn’t loan them any capital.) 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. WTF?

Here’s the best part. It’s going to happen again. Think it can’t? There’s still been no meaningful regulations passed and I will bet a six-pack of Boulevard Pilsner that there will be yet another meltdown that will tank the economy and cost taxpayers huge before 2020. Any takers? ...more

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Jun 25, 2011 Petra-X Off having adventures 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 ...more

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Oct 20, 2009 Lobstergirl rated it liked it

Shelves: business-finance

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 firsthand accounts, contemporaneous journalistic sources, and public records. You can imagine him flipping through his enormous Rolodex (an inapt 80s allusion, but I like the image), calling every Wall Streeter he’s ever spoken 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 firsthand accounts, contemporaneous journalistic sources, and public records. You can imagine him flipping through his enormous Rolodex (an inapt 80s allusion, but I like the image), calling every Wall Streeter he’s ever spoken to since his intern days. He goes inside Lehman CFO Erin Callan’s head (and real estate records) to find out that she borrowed $5 million on a $6.48 million condo at 15 Central Park West, designed by Robert A.M. Stern. We see the suspicious question marks circling in Warren Buffett's head as he talks with Lehman CEO Dick Fuld about possibly buying a stake in Lehman. We get Jim Cramer's point of view on a meeting with Fuld and Callan about short sellers: Fuld is hoping Cramer will talk bullish about Lehman on CNBC, but Cramer doesn't trust what they're telling him. Morgan Stanley, tasked with examining Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s enormous mortgage portfolios to determine how bad the damage is, ships all the data to....India, where Morgan Stanley has an “analytic center.” 1,300 employees there will pore over it. Apparently Sorkin is talking about hard copies here.

The weakness of the book is that it’s as if the entire crisis of 2008 unfolded in a vacuum, divorced from the enormous real estate bubble, mortgage frauds, toxic assets, complex derivatives, deregulation, and banker greed that caused it. Sorkin never explains the origins of the crisis in financial or macroeconomic terms, aside from the briefest sentence here and there. The securitization of mortgages, and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), are explained in less than two pages (of a 600 page book). There are so many trees here, and we spend so much time examining bark and leaves, that I wouldn’t be surprised if many readers had no idea what the forest itself looked like. The degree of detail is about as granular and exhaustive as it gets; I think Sorkin explored every phone call, landline or cellular, that every Wall Street executive made or took during the crisis. When the executives go to their favorite restaurant, San Pietro, we find out what they ate. Sorkin never fails to tell us whether someone lands at Teterboro Airport, or Westchester.

There are juicy quotes, and some juicy gossip. We find out who hated whom. Who thinks who is really stupid. (No one thought SEC chair Christopher Cox was up to the job, and Citigroup’s Vikram Pandit doesn’t shine as luminously as some of the other bulbs.) John Thain is greedy as all get-out. Tim Geithner has six-pack abs. Hank Paulson calls his penis Herman (p. 346), which I wish I didn’t now know. At the height of the crisis Geithner was so intent on having banks merge (to solve their liquidity problems) that some CEOs began referring to him as “eHarmony.” Geithner can’t stand FDIC chairwoman Sheila Bair, who he thinks is a media grandstander, and he subtly mocks her on a conference call. At a tense emergency meeting between the Bush cabinet and Congressional leaders on the TARP plan, arguments, shouting and finger-pointing erupt; Dick Cheney watches silently, smiling.

If you actually want to know what the financial crisis was, and why it happened, read Bethany McLean’s book All the Devils are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis. Unlike Sorkin, McLean is an investigative business journalist. She tells a great story, and she underpins it thoroughly with nuts-and-bolts explanations.
...more

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Jan 27, 2018 Mehrsa rated it liked it

So I teach banking law and I assign a bunch of articles and documentaries on the crisis and I lived through it so nothing in here was new, but I wanted to read this after 10 years to see how well the narrative has aged and also because I forgot some of the play by play. This hasn't aged all that well because it's more of a financial thriller than an analysis. It's also so over the top about lionizing some of these big bad macho bankers and policymakers. Sorkin seems to have a big crush on Dimon ...more

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Dec 30, 2015 Mahlon rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2016

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 became one. Sorkin does a great job in setting out the circumstances that led to the failure of the banks, and then chronicling almost day by day the decision making process behind the eventual bailout.

One of the best financial ...more

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Aug 25, 2011 Mike rated it it was ok

Shelves: culture, history, politics, non-fiction, business

I have 5 books on the 2008 financial crisis and this is the largest. However, it wasn't "Too Big to Fail". Mostly a waste of my time but I finished it and will give it 2 Stars. If you want to know what some of the people on Wall Street and a few in DC were saying and doing, you will be satisfied. You won't learn anything about what caused the financial crisis and you really don't get any detail on the plans to save the system. Just "make a plan", "give me your Plan B", "call that guy", "make a d ...more

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Apr 22, 2016 RJ from the LBC rated it liked it · review of another edition

The level of detail is astonishing in this comprehensive insider's look at the 2008 financial crisis including the failure of Lehman Brothers and the response of government regulators. This book will be an undeniable resource for historians in the years to come. Unfortunately that same level of detail also cripples the book somewhat, making it too unwieldy and dense to be fully appreciated by the average reader. ...more

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Mar 11, 2019 Alok Mishra rated it really liked it

It was very interesting as well as enlightening read! More will told by the native readers but as fas as my own perception about the book is concerned, I got a lot to learn and understand about the functioning of USA economy and the big time players who influence the system.

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Jan 26, 2010 AC rated it it was amazing

Shelves: markets, audible

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 (against Taibi) to rehabilitate Goldman. He makes the case, persuasively, imo -- against the Vampire-Squid conspiracists -- that the media really didn't and doesn't understand how close Goldman itself came to failing (-- so much f ...more

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Mar 13, 2010 Ldrutman Drutman rated it it was ok

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 the Treasury and the Fed) who were trying to prevent the financial sector from collapse.

Mostly it just feels like reading about this chaotic charade with a bunch of crazed sleepless CEOs and lawyers and accountants trying to figu ...more

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Jun 14, 2012 Daiv Shorten rated it really liked it

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 into vernacular for someone like me, I found that the book was a bit too hard to grasp. Not for lack of effort, as Sorkin is not prone to speaking over anyone's head. Rather, the material is so dense, and the factors so similar ...more

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Aug 09, 2013 Alan rated it did not like it

This book made me mighty mad, not only at the despicable characters portrayed in it, but at the author for his adoring, fawning approach to them. More than once I slammed the book down, only to force myself back to it a week or two later. And for that persistence I was rewarded---ever so slightly---by Sorkin daring to approximate analysis in an afterword.

To judge by this book, Sorkin never met a Wall Street bigshot he didn’t worship. But worse, his journalistic style is so overloaded with trivi ...more

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Apr 16, 2011 Kartik rated it it was amazing

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 back and forth between the different 'stages' and bring out the personalities of the key players such as the investment bank CEOs, the NY Fed and the Treasury while at the same time providing enough information about the complicate ...more

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Jul 28, 2014 Rob Smith rated it did not like it · review of another edition

If any book from the past several years that has emerged to have critical acclaim across the broad swath of American society from that cottage industry of economic doomsday books, it's this one. Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big to Fail is the crowning achievement of them all, appearing on several "need-to-read" lists for the controversial economic shindig that eclipsed so much of the last year's of the Bush administration.

Than why does it come off like the economic and political thriller version of If any book from the past several years that has emerged to have critical acclaim across the broad swath of American society from that cottage industry of economic doomsday books, it's this one. Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big to Fail is the crowning achievement of them all, appearing on several "need-to-read" lists for the controversial economic shindig that eclipsed so much of the last year's of the Bush administration.

Than why does it come off like the economic and political thriller version of a Dan Brown novel?

This book chronicles the "behind the scenes" action during what could be termed Wall Street's annus horriblis, 2008. In that year the bubble boom time burst in a big way, and without government intervention, our whole economy would crumble and we'd be living in a Mad-Max capitalist dystopia. Assembled from oral recollections, and a library of primarily documents, Too Big to Fail is a 'who was where, when' of the economic crisis.

The book has a lot going for it actually, and it's easy to see where the lauded praise comes from. The prose is immensely readable, aside from some problem sentences in several areas, Sorkin has an excellent style. He is not boring, he's positively entertaining. That's not something you can say about most books like this. It's a bit lengthy, clocking in at over 500 pages, but those pages will just fly by.

Sorkin ultimately fails. He rarely talks about the ever-burning question of "why?" that should be asked around every corner. There is little to no explanation of the economic forces at work during those times. Sorkin, at best, will give two sentences of description to what is actually going on. For the most part, the economic calamity crashing down around Wall Street is portrayed as some kind of economic natural disaster, brought on my mysterious god-like forces whom the CEOs and executives have no control or agency over. I find it hard to believe this is an innocent mistake on the part of a high-profile business reporter like Sorkin.

Instead what you actually get is the literary equivalent of being roofied and Sorkin pushing the back of your head ever so slowly into a large pile of excrement. If you read nearly any other book on the crisis, it reveals those big investment banks had a heavy hand in setting up their very own demise. I mean, throughout the book, those same banks had all these bad and toxic assets dragging them down, or cooked their books, or did a number of incredibly unethical and sketchy things to make a couple of (hundred million) bucks. But in the narrative Sorkin is loathe to make this connection. In fact, the closest thing the narrative has to a big bad is the hedge fund short-sellers the CEOs bemoan is running them out of business.

Which belies the core problem of the book. Those turbulent days of 2008 is constantly referenced as an actual natural disaster. The crisis is referred to as a cancer, a tsunami, an earthquake, a disease, among other adjectives that belong in some tawdry, tepid action thriller. Couple this with the complete lack of context and explanation of where this all originated from and it just comes off trying to hard to absolve those of actions.

Then there's the fact the book is filled with entirely irrelevant information. The personal feelings of some execs towards other, the high school drama involved in running a high-stakes, high-profit investment bank, what restaurants they dine at, what cares they drive, etc etc. The entire book is filled with enough details you could've sworn Sorkin was writing the HBO movie adaptation at the same time. Do I need to know that some execs think that the CEO of JP Morgan Chase looks in shape for someone his age? Or that Tim Geitner has a six pack? No, but like the Wall Street version of People magazine or Seventeen magazine, Sorkin dutifully chronicles it and not the economic train wreck some of those same people put us in.

It doesn't help Sorkin sets this book up like a thriller too. There's no table of contents and chapters are titled numerically. It looks and reads like a novel as well. There are settings, scenes and we often following characters about their day. There's also a distressingly high number of quotes and conversations. Sorkin takes pains to say he's reconstructed these conversations to the sources' best recollections. I find this suspect for a few reasons. No one remembers everything perfectly and we often reconstruct our memories to paint ourselves in the best possible light. The dialogue reads too much like a novel or too cinematic to have actually happened accurately. This accounts for the readability of the book, but it loses a sense of accuracy and reportage. People talk first draft after all. Plus, Sorkin makes section or chapter breaks on an overly dramatic cliffhanger. This is a writing technique one of my old English teachers would called the "Dan Brown School of Writing."

The other thing to consider is, this came out in 2009, a year after the events covered in the book. A year where the bankers and government officials were about as popular as a witch in old-timey Puritan Salem. I sincerely doubt any oral recollections are as truthful as it claims.

In all honesty there are a slew of better books explaining the financial crisis of 2008. And all of them do a better job of it than someone who is, to borrow a phrase from Taibbi, a "shameless, ball-gargling prostitute of Wall Street." As much as I dislike Taibbi's grandiosity and hyperbole, after reading this book, I think I'll cede him this one. ...more

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May 02, 2012 Scott Rhee rated it liked it

Shelves: wall-street, politics, nonfiction, economy

Andrew Ross Sorkin's "Too Big to Fail" should frighten and enrage readers, and, for some, it probably will, but for a majority of readers, it will fall into that "grand systemic changes need to be made, but I (an average person) can't do anything to change it" mentality that cripples many of us into petrification and denial. Our heads go back in the sand, and we go about our daily lives as if we didn't have this looming storm over our shoulders.

Unfortunately, if history has taught us anything ( ...more

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Dec 30, 2009 Brendan rated it liked it

Shelves: math-science-business-economics, politics-political-science-history

This book is a great feat of reporting - Sorkin conducted thousands of hours of interviews and obviously put a lot of research into reconstructing all the events surrounding the meltdown on wallstreet in 2008. The book focuses on the Lehman bankruptcy, and then focuses on how the US Treasury and the Fed eventually developed TARP to stabilize the financial/credit markets.

So, the book effectively reads like: "X happened, so Y CEO called Z CEO, who then called Hank Paulson, who then conferenced in ...more

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Mar 15, 2011 Ci rated it it was amazing

An excellent chronicle of the fiasco of 2008. This is a sympathetic group portrait of the major players in the financial crisis. Their failures and success are not as important as their desperate efforts to avert something catastrophic. One should always be reminded of the excellent quote in the end of the book by Theodore Roosevelt's speech in Sorbonne in 1910:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done the ...more

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May 22, 2010 BookSweetie rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

This book is not too big to read, or even too big to enjoy, provided that you are a reader who wants to be reading the book that is, rather than a long list of possible alternative books about the severest financial crisis since our Great Depression. This book is a reportorial non-fiction style book with a dash of fiction-like drama that is low on the "why" and heavy on the "who" and "who said and did what when." That part is done fairly successfully, although readers should be forewarned of tw ...more

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Nov 10, 2015 Jeff rated it really liked it

I picked this book up mistakenly thinking it was Paul Bunyan's memoir. It was not, but enjoyable anyhow. ...more

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Oct 17, 2012 Bob Adamcik rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, business-and-finance, politics-and-current-affairs

This was a very long and (at times, tedious) read, but in fact informative and worthwhile. The obvious question before reading it is whether or not it is biased, i.e. slanted either left or right...a logical question given how the crisis has been politicized. But frankly, I think Sorkin did his homework, and to my unspecialized ear, it sounds pretty complete and balanced. He also weaves a pretty good story to get you through all the minutiae.

And I have to say (much as I kind of hate to do so) t This was a very long and (at times, tedious) read, but in fact informative and worthwhile. The obvious question before reading it is whether or not it is biased, i.e. slanted either left or right...a logical question given how the crisis has been politicized. But frankly, I think Sorkin did his homework, and to my unspecialized ear, it sounds pretty complete and balanced. He also weaves a pretty good story to get you through all the minutiae.

And I have to say (much as I kind of hate to do so) that I emerged from it with a fuller understanding of what happened (and is still happening), and a bit more sympathetic toward many of the players and the pressures they were under and the decisions they had to make. I'm certainly more sympathetic towards virtually all the government players at Treasury and the Fed; less so to the bankers (save a few). It was certainly revealing to see how some truly fought to save their firms...but at the same time, distressing to see how some, at least, continued in denial right up to the end, while others continued their preoccupation for titles and positions and salaries and bonuses even as the were grasping at straws to save the world as they knew it...a world which was invariably crumbling because of their own greed and selfish shortsightedness.

There was a similar book written (and which I read) after the savings and load crisis of the 1980s that resulted from Reagan's deregulation of that industry, a crisis that also cost the government billions of dollars (though I believe less than the current crisis). I can't remember that book title now, and cannot find it. I wish I could. I remember it was excellent as well, and like this one, only too revealing. The difference is that, in that instance, much of what occurred was flat out criminal...whereas much of the current crisis seems, at least in a purely legalistic vs ethical sense, more justifiable as logical result of further deregulation.

What's missing in the book, though not integral to it, are a prologue explaining the history of deregulation, interest rate declines and the mortgage boom, and emergence of hedge funds and DDO's, and resulting actions on the part of investment firms that led to the crisis; and secondly, perhaps in the epilogue, an explanation of how the crisis, when it occurred, brought about the economic crises still going on in Europe..especially Greece, Spain, Ireland and Iceland.

I suggest reading the book, though it's a long read. ...more

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Dec 19, 2010 DoctorM rated it really liked it

Shelves: economics, politics

There's a variety of military history sometimes called "maps and chaps"--- often vivid, well-researched, and well-written ---that tells you everything that happened in a given battle or campaign, but without any context in politics or social costs. Andrew Ross Sorkin's "Too Big To Fail" is a kind of maps 'n' chaps version of the Global Economic Meltdown of the Year Eight--- a vivid, well-researched, very well-written account of the events that led up to financial chaos in September and October o There's a variety of military history sometimes called "maps and chaps"--- often vivid, well-researched, and well-written ---that tells you everything that happened in a given battle or campaign, but without any context in politics or social costs. Andrew Ross Sorkin's "Too Big To Fail" is a kind of maps 'n' chaps version of the Global Economic Meltdown of the Year Eight--- a vivid, well-researched, very well-written account of the events that led up to financial chaos in September and October of the Year Eight and culminated with the TARP program and the effective nationalisation of a number of major banks and brokerages. Sorkin takes us inside the boardrooms and the Fed, and conveys the sense of panic and desperation and frenzied emergency dealmaking of those weeks. But it's all a bit...abstracted. Sorkin never really explains why all this is happening. It's like an account of Bonaparte's career that never really mentions the French Revolution or its effects. Sorkin's heroes--- especially Hank Paulson at Treasury, Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke at the Fed, and Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan ---dash across the pages making deals and fighting off disaster. But there's no real sense of what's gone wrong with the financial system--- no description of the monsters lurking out beyond Midtown Manhattan and what created them.

Assuming that Sorkin's informants and interviewees are mostly truthful, the story is one without many obvious villains. Even Dick Fuld at Lehman comes across as more hapless and clueless than anything else, as does Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman. The heads of the great banks and brokerages do seem to care about their employees and staffs, but they only vaguely understand what's happened in the markets and never understand the depth of post-bailout populist anger.

"Too Big To Fail" is about how catastrophe was averted, but it's a view that doesn't explain the reasons for financial collapse, and it doesn't look at the effects the meltdown had beyond the windows of office towers in New York. Sorkin has written a fine account of what happened in the autumn of 2008, but it's like battle history that's only about generals and their maps, with no context and no history. ...more

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Feb 15, 2016 Jeremy Stock rated it it was amazing

An excellent read. I'm curious now to somehow watch the HBO documentary that was made (with the same author?).

I felt that the author of this book, though comprehensive in his detail, too often gave an apologetic and even rationalizing explanation as to the motives and intentions of the primary actors in the catastrophic events and decisions that took place.

One of the biggest take-aways from this story is that Hank Paulson and Timothy Geithner (government agents) got all the CEOs (of the bigges ...more

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Feb 06, 2013 Peter rated it it was amazing

Shelves: economics

I had retired from the Federal Reserve System just before the financial crisis of 2008-2009, but I was aware of many of the issues. This is a solid and well researched story of the crisis.

The crisis was a creature of the shadow banking system--the array of investment banks, hedge funds, and private equity funds. It was akin to an old-time run on the bank -- short term credit dried up, financial institutions had to sell assets to meet bills and committed purchases, every institutions stress was p ...more

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Nov 18, 2010 Mac rated it liked it

A play-by-play of the days leading up to and shortly after the financial crisis, centered largely around the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and climaxing with the TARP program. Unlike Michael Lewis, who drew a fascinating and engaging story out of the short-sellers who made a bundle when the building fell down, Sorkin tries to tell "the" story of the crisis in a narrative form. I'm not sure I'm on board with that, considering how close he sets the point-of-view, but it's become a common practice ...more

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Dec 28, 2017 Wayland Smith rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2017reading-challenge

I read this book to fill a slot in a challenge. It's not my usual kinda thing. It has a lot of information about the financial crisis of 2008. While it's informative, you almost need a degree in finance to follow it some of the time, or that's what it seemed like to me. I definitely learned a lot more about those events.

I also learned that, from what I could tell, some, if not most, of what happened could have been prevented. It was a combination of greedy/stupid choices on the part of the bank ...more

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Jun 03, 2014 Celine rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, school, nonfiction-that-reads-like-fiction

Never did I ever expect to fall so deeply enthralled with the inner lives of CEO's, Federal Reserve Chairmen and government officials. What I love most is that Sorkin writes so candidly that you find yourself lost in the turn of events yourself. By the end of the book I was pulling for people to whom I never thought I would give sympathy, and rooting against people I originally thought I liked. Definitely worth the read, even if you have no interest in the subprime mortgage crisis. ...more

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Feb 15, 2016 Shivani rated it really liked it

Subprime crises- behind the scene! Amazing book. I wonder what all the author would have gone through to collect and collate this kind of information. From Bear Stearns to TARP, everyone involved and the conversations that took place; all so palpable.

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Sep 22, 2018 ScienceOfSuccess rated it liked it

Shelves: waiting

I was expecting something more from this one, since its almost 600pages, at least 300 over average. This one was as good as the others, maybe written more like a novel :)

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May 20, 2015 jun rated it really liked it

The Cannon Fodder, Lehman Brothers
- Review of Too Big to Fail

In 2008, the lucky Chinese people sheltered under the state-owned system watched a striking and destructive financial crisis resulting from private ownership. While the real estate and financial market became sluggish, the media industry thrived to be the winner with a variety of books, films and television programs. Of which the interview collection - Too Big to Fail under the cloak of documentary produced by the young and successful ...more

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Oct 18, 2019 Duncan Pelham rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

A remarkable account of the frantic behind-the-scenes efforts to stop the 2008 Wall Street credit crisis from causing a global economic meltdown. It's fascinating to see just how much worse this catastrophe could have been – and the role sheer panic, across media, financial markets, governments and consumers, played in proliferating the downward spiral.

Sorkin does a great job in fleshing out all of the key players - and there are a lot to keep track of - exploring their backgrounds, motivations A remarkable account of the frantic behind-the-scenes efforts to stop the 2008 Wall Street credit crisis from causing a global economic meltdown. It's fascinating to see just how much worse this catastrophe could have been – and the role sheer panic, across media, financial markets, governments and consumers, played in proliferating the downward spiral.

Sorkin does a great job in fleshing out all of the key players - and there are a lot to keep track of - exploring their backgrounds, motivations, axes to grind and, abundantly, towering delusions of grandeur. It's densely packed with so many pivotal characters, many of whom Sorkin bizarrely insists on describing again and again as "disarmingly young-looking", that it's easy to forget who’s who. The long list at the front of the book, detailing the protagonists and their corresponding companies / government bodies, comes in handy.

If you're expecting an account of the causes of the crisis, you might want to look elsewhere – this book does touch on them but fairly fleetingly. Still, you build a clear picture of the behaviours that precipitated the crisis as you race through the 600-page story, revealing the irresponsible lending, the total lack of regulation investment banks were subjected to, the banks’ gross misunderstanding of their own assets in the pursuit of profit, a tendency to leverage deals with perverse amounts of debt, and the blind belief in a ‘self-correcting’ market.

Sorkin doesn't offer up a handful of cartoon fat-cat villains to wag your finger at - which admittedly I was rather hoping for. The reality is far more complex; the level of detail laid out here depicts a picture of, yes, greed and egos run rife, and yet most of these business leaders arguably foster a genuine concern for their staff and shareholders (evidenced by their willingness to go down with the ship) if not, perhaps crucially, the long-term state of the economy. The convoluted nature of the toxic assets (collateralized debt obligations consisting mostly of dodgy mortages) and the way they were being traded meant that even the legions of experienced CEOs, CFOs, COOs, traders, lawyers and insurers didn't know how bad things were for them, right up to the very minute they were forced to merge, step down or fold.

Much has been said of the fact Too Big To Fail reads like a thriller. And for the most part it does, moving at break-neck speeds as Treasurer Hank Paulson and his team of Federal Reserve lackies try everything in their power – and some things out of their power - to halt the contagion of failing banks. Especially interesting is how every decision made by the government was determined through the lens of America’s firm (and often baffling) belief that the state should not in any circumstance meddle in the market, even in a situation as dire as this. Paulson, understandably, seemed to spend half his time worrying that Congress or the public might brand him the socialist ‘Bailout King’ (is this why he let Lehman Brothers fail?).

Reading this almost real-time account of the crisis feels just as often nail-biting as it does exhausting (Paulson’s endless rushing from bank to bank to facilitate mergers is manic). At times, this gargantuan book is held back by too much granular detail. And yet it manages to be immensely entertaining and informative, emphasising (somehow with clarity, cutting through the perplexing and technical nature of the subject) just how close we came to the edge, marking what will hopefully become a turning point in finance, throwing much-needed scrutiny on the irrational, long-held allegiance to unfettered markets. ...more

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About Andrew Ross Sorkin

Andrew Ross Sorkin

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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.

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“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.” — 13 likes

“There are no atheists in foxholes or ideologues in a financial crisis. Ben Bernanke” — 10 likes

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