Too Big to FailThe Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System---and Themselves

Andrew Ross Sorkin

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Summary

Too Big to Fail

By: Andrew Ross Sorkin

Narrarated by: William Hughes

A real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in America’s financial history by an acclaimed New York Times Reporter

Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami. From inside the corner office at Lehman Brothers to secret meetings in South Korea, and the corridors of Washington, Too Big to Fail is the definitive story of the most powerful men and women in finance and politics grappling with success and failure, ego and greed, and, ultimately, the fate of the world’s economy.

“We’ve got to get some foam down on the runway!” a sleepless Timothy Geithner, the then-president of the Federal Reserve of New York, would tell Henry M. Paulson, the Treasury secretary, about the catastrophic crash the world’s financial system would experience.

Through unprecedented access to the players involved, Too Big to Fail re-creates all the drama and turmoil, revealing neverdisclosed details and elucidating how decisions made on Wall Street over the past decade sowed the seeds of the debacle. This true story is not just a look at banks that were “too big to fail,” it is a real-life thriller with a cast of bold-faced names who themselves thought they were too big to fail.

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Audiobook Information
EDITOR'S PICK // New York Times Best Seller
  • Edition: Unabridged
  • Author: Andrew Ross Sorkin (See All Books)
  • Date Released: Nov 4, 2009
  • Publisher: Penguin Audio
  • Genre: United States History, Business & Economics, Politics & Current Events, Economic History

Total File Size: 577 MB (17 files) Total Length: 20 Hours, 59 Minutes

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Alfred Soto

eMusic Contributor

11.04.09
Andrew Ross Sorkin, Too Big to Fail
2009 | Label: Penguin Audio

Sorkin gets the small details right of 2008's massive financial Wall Street collapse
What emerges in Andrew Ross Sorkin's account of how the largest Wall Street firms collapsed in 2008 is how distinctly untalented their chief executives were: how their incompetence swelled to match the sizes of the multinational consortiums they led. Although Too Big to Fail may show more interest in revealing trifling details about the executives than in the history that would have explained the origins of the crisis, the book remains compelling because its central story is still unfolding.

Sorkin profiles a dizzying menagerie whose frantic helicopter rides and late-night phone calls constitute a large portion of his narrative: Richard Fuld, the truculent CEO of Lehman Brothers, wriggling like a bug on flypaper; and the Diet Coke-swigging Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, betraying his free-market principles as he pitches bailing out one Wall Street institution after the other and dodges accusations of socialism from Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky, Republican. But the only way Sorkin would know is by riding in those helicopters himself — and therein lies the problem with Too Big to Fail: access gets him into Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's office, but also reportage of banality like: "[Lehman Brothers COO Herbert] McDade started calling his secretary to see if they could book a commercial flight home." Broad-ranging economic contributions to the crisis barely get a mention, but Sorkin does note how many Diet Cokes Paulson consumes in one day.

Like the incestuous bonds that led former New York Federal Reserve and Goldman Sachs officials straight to the executive branch of the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations, Too Big to Fail falters because it confuses proximity with intimacy. But Sorkin can spin a good yarn, and if his emphasis on names at first seems misplaced please note that we're likely to encounter them again soon…in the next administration.

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