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

by Andrew Ross Sorkin

He suggested that if they structured it so that Goldman would take a first loss on the deal—in the same way that JP Morgan had agreed to accept the first $1 billion of losses at Bear Stearns before the Federal Reserve would step in and guarantee the next $29 billion—the government might well consider acting as a backstop.