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

Many of the House Democrats and Republicans who had opposed the measure on Monday had since been persuaded to switch their votes—some by appeals from the two presidential candidates or from the president, some by the added provisions in the bill, and others by the mounting signs that the financial crisis was dragging the economy down into a deep recession. A recent report indicated that 159,000 jobs had been lost in September, the fastest pace of monthly job cuts in more than five years. Stocks had slid sharply that week, and both the takeover of Washington Mutual and the desperate jockeying to secure a partner for Wachovia revealed that not only Wall Street was in trouble.