Andrew Sorkin - Too Big To Fail

This is an important narrative of the events surrounding the 2008 Wall Street bailout. it is well written amd generally sympathetic to the position of thoe faced with cleaning up the mess. It is not sympathetic to those who created it.

Excellent book on a topic we should all read - Written in an easy to understand format. Couldn't believe the fast delivery of the book after I put in the order - just a couple of days!! Thanks

Hi all...I am a big wall street fan and a big myster lover. This is like the best mystery book I have read. It takes you deep into the Wall street world and explains indepth on how the washington helped/rescued the wall street. Andrew Ross's approach is soo good and made it lively. One who loves mystery/thrillers movies should read this book except tht this is real and billions if not trillions of dollars are at stake.

Surreal. //Too Big to Fail// takes everyday folks inside a world most of us will never enter, the world of the rich and powerful: Wall Street and Washington DC. Inside this spine-tingling story of the financial collapse of 2008, you'll find daily helicopter commutes to work; secret meetings in Moscow; tough talk; and hard falls. This is the true tale of the failing of America's banking system and the demise of Lehman Brothers.

Written like fiction, but with all the nausea-invoking trappings of reality, //Too Big to Fail// doesn't miss a detail--sometimes failingly so. Indeed, it could earn the nickname //Too Big to Read// with its 539 pages of text and its 38 pages of what appears to be 8-point font notes.

Yet, its mass is also symbolic. The enormity of the economic crash of 2008, the multiple events leading up to it, and the dozens of players involved could not be chronicled in any smaller a scale. In fact, the tome begins with eight pages listing "The Cast of Characters and the Companies They Kept." While reading, you'll surely flip back to that list frequently as the characters mount and the details unfold.

Author Andrew Ross Sorkin, also a //New York Times// reporter, deftly moves these characters across the chess board that makes up his ultra-in-depth report. He helps bring to life otherwise unknown pawns from our daily newspapers. He provides details of their real lives--the good and the ugly. He reveals their inner motivations, their secret meetings, and their deep interconnectedness. Reading this book is like being a fly on the wall in some science fiction novel.

But this is real; all too real. Sorkin reminds you of this fact with a haunting insert of frat-boy-style men's club images of suited and tuxedoed politicos, bankers, and the general leading men (and a few women) in this horrifying drama.

//Too Big to Fail// plays out the cards that only an elite few were allowed to deal as most Americans watched their television sets in fear. It explains the panic, the missteps, and the strange strategy interlinking Wall Street and DC. You'll find it hard to remember you're not reading fiction, and will be plagued by a foggy feeling of being somewhere between two worlds.

Sorkin concludes the book with his own learned insights, which you'll trust beyond compare after completing his detailed depiction of the crisis. "Vulture investing is back in vogue again, with everyone raising money in anticipation of the collapse of commercial real estate and the once-in-a-lifetime bargains that might be available as a result." Have they learned nothing? Perhaps this book will become required reading for generations to come? One can hope.

Reviewed by Amber K. Stott

As someone who is interested in the meltdown I was already inclined to purchase a book like this, when I saw Charlie Rose's interview of Sorkin I knew I wanted to get this book.

This book basicly looks at how then Treasury Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner
& Bernake saved the world from a depression far worse than the one that lasted in the U.S. from 1929-1941.

The book looks at how the policies of the Clinton and Bush II adminstrations basicaly enabled (in the 12 step sense) the largest investment banks on
Wall Street into a period of full blown Mainia with thier risky investments in the
Sub-Prime Mortage market.

The also looks at the charges by Dick Fuld et all that the "short sellers" may have contributed to the meltdown, and the counter-charge by the short sellers that
those such as Fuld were blaming the short sellers for thier lousy decisions.

It looks very clearly at Dick Fuld's mental state during the portion of the meltdown that led to Lehman Brothers going bankrupt.

Fuld emerges as tragic figure, full of arrogance, greed and hubris but also someone who inspired loyalty and as someone who after getting over 37 million in bounses rather than keeping it lost almost all of it by using it to prop up Lehman Brothers.

It also looks at the pettiness of these characters such as someone who is in a position to help one of these banks but refuses to do so because he believes the bank president snubbed his wife at thier wedding recption 40 years before!

There is even a quote that is somewhat funny
When a Bank regulator is told why the regulators should take a much tougher stance
on short selling.

"I believe in free-markets, I believe in free streets too, but when people on the streets start carrying bats I think it's time for a curfew."

This is in short everything you want in a non fiction book.