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

In retrospect, this bubble, like all bubbles, was an example of what, in his classic 1841 book, Scottish author Charles Mackay called “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.” Instead of giving birth to a brave new world of riskless investments, the banks actually created a risk to the entire financial system.