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

When people think about “too big to fail” today, their biggest concern isn’t necessarily whether our banking systems will break under the weight of leverage—it doesn’t appear that a cataclysmic leverage-induced crisis is likely—but whether something even more extreme is on the horizon. One of those fears, given the interconnectedness of the banking system, is the possibility of a cyberattack—by state actors or independent thieves—that could threaten the entire global economy if it were able to circumvent the various electronic blockades and security systems that have been developed. That the public could wake up one morning and find their accounts at a zero balance or even off by a decimal has always been a nightmare scenario, but it is now one that some security experts suggest is a matter that is not an “if” but a “when.” And if such a security breach were to take place, it could, like any panic that undermines trust in the system, give rise to a catastrophe far beyond anything we’ve yet experienced.