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

At around 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, September 25, leaders of both parties and of the relevant committees crowded around the large oval mahogany table of the stately Cabinet Room of the White House, joined by the presidential candidates, senators McCain and Obama. Seated at the middle of the throng were the president, Vice President Cheney, and Hank Paulson. The group had been assembled in an attempt to persuade House Republicans, who had been emboldened by McCain, to rejoin the negotiations and agree on a bailout. “All of us around the table take this issue very seriously, and we know we’ve got to get something done as quickly as possible,” Bush told the group. “If money isn’t loosened up, this sucker could go down,” he warned, referring to the nation’s economy. But the meeting quickly degenerated from a promising effort to reach a consensus into a partisan fracas after the House Republican leader, John Boehner of Ohio, announced that House Republicans would not support the bailout, but would instead propose an alternative that would involve insuring mortgages with a fund paid for by Wall Street. When Democrats protested that such a plan would do nothing to address the current crisis, arguments erupted throughout the room, followed by finger-pointing and shouting, a spectacle that Cheney sat watching with a smile. Obama, in an attempt to reach a compromise, asked, “Well, do we need to start from scratch, or are there ways to incorporate some of those concerns?” But by then it...