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

the big brokerage firms had been bolstering their bets with enormous quantities of debt. Wall Street firms had debt to capital ratios of 32 to 1. When it worked, this strategy worked spectacularly well, validating the industry’s complex models and generating record earnings. When it failed, however, the result was catastrophic.