I believe Sorkin’s Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System–and Themselves is a great read.  Its the best book I have read this year.  Sadly this book reads like a intense thriller, yet reveals the truth about how Wall Street’s greed and the “old-boy networks” were too dumb to act in time to save the country from falling into a great recession.

Sorkin’s revelations about those so called financial titans are more accurately described as clueless.  Ego was their chief reason for making so many horrible financial decisions.

I cannot think of a more striking example as Sorkin described the board members of Bear Stearns, voting to send the firm into Chapter 11 bankruptcy with one member choosing not to participate….he was in Detroit playing in a professional card game tournament.

Titans? Sorkin paints a more accurate picture of these guys closer to the attitudes of the out-of-touch imperialist British monarchy.  Defined by The Dictionary of Human Geography, Imperialism is “the creation and maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination.”  Sorkin’s reinforces this definition about the failed Wall Street Empire.

I was amused to learn of a photograph of Mitsubishi’s $9Billion check for Morgan Stanley….yea NINE zeros making it probably the biggest check ever written.  Simply amazing.

Sorkin outlines the US Treasury’s secret plan to save the banking system 5 MONTHS before TARP was introduced!

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke developed a “Break the Glass” recapitalization plan, however by that time the panic was well underway.  So the Goldman Sachs alumni running the Fed and Treasury put Wall Street’s financial responsibility on the backs of the American taxpayer?  Why not call in the emerging banks in China?  Well, they were talking to them too.

Andrew Ross Sorkin has written a fascinating, scene-by-scene, saga of the eyeless trying to march the clueless through Great Depression II.
Tom Wolfe on TBTF:

Hard to believe Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman, AIG and Bear Stearns could conduct business in such a way that set up the financial crisis.  The underlying message in a globalized world is simply how any local organization can place money into funds that teeter of the efforts of banks half way around the world.

Welcome to financial globalization 4.0  Its too good to put down.
Author’s website

Tags: Andrew Ross Sorkin, Too Big to Fail, Bear Stearns, Wall Street, Morgan Stanley, Lehman, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, recession, AIG, trends