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

Up until 2008, there was a widely understood social compact: The Masters of the Universe—the wizards of Wall Street, the corporate titans, the occupants of grand offices in Washington and around the world, the grandees attending Davos—wielded power and riches beyond anything the average person could conceive. Yet they were entitled, and allowed, to do so because they at least seemed to know what they were doing managing the world economy such that we all were basically alright. . . . The Great Recession shattered that consensus for good, destroying the idea that the elites earned their disparate control of the world’s wealth and power.