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 said he hoped that Congress could pass the legislation within days and promised to get a full proposal to them literally within hours. “If it doesn’t pass, then heaven help us all,” Paulson said. Harry Reid, sitting across from Bernanke, looked at Paulson with a sense of bemusement about the prospect that Congress would pass a bill of this magnitude that quickly. “Do you know what you are asking me to do?” he said. “It takes me forty-eight hours to get the Republicans to agree to flush the toilets around here.” “Harry,” Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), who was deeply frightened by Paulson and Bernanke’s presentation, interjected, “I think we need to do this, we should try to do this, and we can do this.”