Introduction
Too big to fail is a book that highly analyzes the global financial crisis of 2007 to 2009. The book correctly outlines the major activities that happened before and during the inward explosion of the economy worldwide in 2007 and 2008. Activities that happened in the meeting rooms of major firms in Wall Street and on Capital Hill are wonderfully reminded and simplified for the normal reader who might be unaware of precisely what happened at the time. The Andrew Ross Sorkin book is amid the novels that first undertook the wide crisis; beginning with the time after JP Morgan accepted to purchase Bear and shortly ends after the states decided to insert a lot of billions of American dollars into the nation’s largest banks. The book is thorough and details the attractive interplay among Wall Street and Washington within eight serious months that brought the system of finance to the edge of collapse.
Main Body
All major players in the economic crisis are involved in this book, Lehman Brothers Dick
Fuld, Hank Paulson, George W. Bush, David Einhorn and many more. All of their activities during the recession are retold in painstaking detail. In this book you are able to get some perception as to what actually happened during the economic crisis. The writer takes a subject that is too complicated and simplifiers it to an average reader. He is great at presenting important complicated information and makes it simple to digest and understand.
Too big to fail represents the in depth descriptions of the times that changed the financial landscape of the United States, and the story is highly engaging and propulsive. The writer starts the story cleverly. Sorkin makes note of 200 talks carried out with unfamiliar individuals over five hundred hours. After very many interviews the narrative, as pieced together, appeared to openly reveal the rarified globe of the elite power agents in Washington and on Wall Street. Sorkin depend mostly on part of his 200 sources. Therefore the writer turns a great story placing all the readers in the places where activities are unfolded.
Ross Sorkins book Too big to fail interprets similar to a play-by-play as it covers from myriad conferences to telephone talks and then reverse once more as ‘’Washington and Wall Street clashed to secure the system of finance and themselves.’’ For instance, the writer reports on suggested merger conversations, but understanding that such integral was not completed takes away any suspense. A sports play-by-play easily reports what took place. There is little stress on coaches’ plan of the game previous to the game or what the coaches were planning during the game.
Reading about Lehman irresponsibility before the disaster, one can simply conclude that it was necessary for it to fail and not surviving the harrowing problems for the world’s money markets. We are confirmed in the book that the world of huge finance is packed with grey parts. Hank Paulson’s kin worked in Chicago together with Lehman brothers in the office of President George Bush. He was Lehman’s personal equity division advisor. A part from that, he was also a president’s cousin. He was among the managerial committee. Had Paulson got a way of using the government finance to bail out Lehman brothers, it would have elevated severe queries of conflicts of interest.
In Washington conference that saw the financial institutions such as banks being forced to take the fund of the government. Sorkin discloses that the immediate question is that Thain, who was the marill Lynch and executive of American bank, unleashes how receiving taxpayer cash would impact bank’s compensation policies. Apart from these conferences and discussions, the book power concentrates on the particulars about the individual involved. It also evident that after Paulson prepared a lot of dollars as Goldman Sachs prior to joining treasury managed to survive a cautious life. He and the wife were housed in the City of New York when he operated the storied investment bank. We after discover that this devoted birder, a Prius driver, and also have a big chuck of land in the United States, southern part, but as an environmentalist.
The cover of sorkin book that show the doorstopper report of financial problem, is a portray of a fossil, suggesting that in the book we will study about dangerous but fated beasts, whose deficiencies in development will relegate them to death. It is not a terrible image symbol for investment bankers, a part being here. The writer blow-by-blow report of the disclosing of United States activities, when the monetary titans up to and counting Goldman Sachs were hours or days away from finishing the liquidity, provides a useful dramatis characteristic of those occupying Jurassic park of Wall Street, in the way of a compendious novel from Russian. The book has endless explanations of the people who participate, for instance, consider the following: black Lexus of Jamie Dimon driven far from the control of his Park Avenue residence to lead down to the Fed before.
Dimon was seated in the rare seat responding to emails through his black berry phone. He was done with a conference call with his management team, notifying them to be ready for the bankruptcies of Lehman Brothers together with other members of the committee including Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs. He recognized he might have been exaggerating the case, but figured they demanded to be prepared. He was the person who recognized Too Much.’’ Sorkin depiction of Erin Callan, once finance manager of Lehman, is typical: she is a striking blonde’’ with Sex and the city’’ stilettos, supposed to be participated romantically with the gentleman who employed her, a proposal prepared without a slice of confirmation. A major predicament, though, is the claiming of the authority of omniscience, basing on about five hundred hours of interviews with individuals, about two hundred in number.
In his book, Sorkin give some truly important detail. Fuld, the selfish, rude, but deeply faithful person who directed Lehman to damage that it experienced, is totaled in a single story: while mountaineering with the son of a coworker who was asthmatic, the boy frightened and
was directed to safety by his dad and Fuld. They met another hiker who glanced at the young boy and remarked: my, are we not breathless today.’’ Fuld turned and yelled at him. Eat shit and die! Eat shit and die!’’
In this book the author maintains a lot of his views out of the narrative until the two pages at the end. For instance, in his views, the state permitting Lehman to be bankrupt was the means that led the floodgates to disclose. This is likely why the writer dedicated a lot of the book creating the story of Lehman. The author is unsure concerning whether the state companies could have avoided the fall down of the banks or they were right by not acting. He is clear that banking control was demanded highly at the time and demanded also at the moment. He does ok to maintain a lot of his opinion until the end of the story even though one is able to differ with his views.
The author appears to like strange access to sources. For example, the book have little- known reports of how famous investor Warren Buffett discrete homespun intelligence to lead Wall Street rulers during dangerous moments. In the book we are told that conversations among the Oracle of Omaha and Fuld concerning possible asset in Lehman fizzled out in March 2008. After some months, Buffet posted a letter of pages to then reserves secretary, Henry Paulson, stating how the United States could purchase deadly investments of the bank and make that helpful.
In the book the author drives the reader within the horrifying days just before the collapse of Lehman, an activity that through confirmation was a tripwire of world financial disorder. After that, the reader is then introduced into the AIG bailout. There is the failure of Stanley as well as Goldman and Sachs. Like a narrative the book concludes with an activity that is not from America, the insertion of tax revenue into banks, a pseudo-nationalization of the United States financial scheme. Sorkin there takes the reader inside the terrifying periods. Sorkins provides Wall Street past in finding a lot of detail that otherwise would have stayed in darkness. It is only in the Sorkin book that the reader will find a report that depicts Henry Paulson as a perfect servant of the nation, a real superhero missing tights and a cape only.
The author on the other hand does not argue why specifically these activities took place. In the epilogue, the writer, for a short time, states four activities that percolated for more than ten years and conspired to bring about the ideal storm in 2008. He could have dedicated along chapter explaining these activities and how the events conspired to bring about the crisis. It is a little bit clear that he is neither a banker nor an academician; he could not feel capable doing the work. In a few areas previous to the author epilogue, he allows the readers to identify his negative view of some companies. Sorkin is mainly spiteful towards the journal editorial page of Wall Street. As a storyteller, the writer should have excluded his views of these individuals and institutions. Apart from these occurrences, he majorly maintains his views away from the manuscripts up to the few pages at the end.
Conclusion
Even though the book is comprehensive, in some ways it is shallow. One significant aspect lacking from the author’s story is the unique insight which I expected would be his access and fascination product. In part, it may be because of the scarcity of opinions from the people holding positions below the different top managers and deeper into different ventures and organizations very important to this story. Crosscurrents familiar to insides at Lehman Brothers were available but are absent in this book.
Work cited
Sorkin, Andrew Ross. Too Big to Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street. London: Penguin Books, Limited, 2009.