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

Everyone was calling it a “bailout”—a word Paulson hated. As far as he was concerned, he had just helped save the American economy. It was a bailout in the literal sense of bailing water out of a sinking boat, not a handout. He didn’t understand why no one in Washington could see that distinction.