Andrew Ross Sorkin - Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System--and Themselves

T his book is the product of more than five hundred hours of interviews with more than two hundred individuals who participated directly in the events surrounding the financial crisis. These individuals include Wall Street chief executives, board members, management teams, current and former U.S. government officials, foreign government officials, bankers, lawyers, accountants, consultants, and other advisers. Many of these individuals shared documentary evidence, including contemporaneous notes, e-mails, tape recordings, internal presentations, draft filings, scripts, calendars, call logs, billing time sheets, and expense reports that provided the basis for much of the detail in this book. They also spent hours painstakingly recalling the conversations and details of various meetings, many of which were considered privileged and confidential.

Given the continuing controversy surrounding many of these eventsseveral criminal investigations are still ongoing as of this writing, and countless civil lawsuits have been filedmost of the subjects interviewed took part only on the condition that they not be identified as a source. As a result, and because of the number of sources used to confirm every scene, readers should not assume that the individual whose dialogue or specific feeling is recorded was necessarily the person who provided that information. In many cases the account came from him or her directly, but it may also have come from other eyewitnesses in the room or on the opposite side of a phone call (often via speakerphone), or from someone briefed directly on the conversation immediately afterward, or, as often as possible, from contemporaneous notes or other written evidence.

Much has already been written about the financial crisis, and this book has tried to build upon the extraordinary record created by my esteemed colleagues in financial journalism, whose work I cite at the end of this volume. But what I hope I have provided here is the first detailed, moment-by-moment account of one of the most calamitous times in our history. The individuals who propel this narrative genuinely believed they wereand may in fact have beenstaring into the economic abyss.

Galileo Galilei said, All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. I hope I have discovered at least some of them, and that in doing so I have made the often bewildering financial events of the past few years a little easier to understand.

FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

American International Group (AIG)

Steven J. Bensinger, chief financial officer and executive vice president

Joseph J. Cassano, head, London-based AIG Financial Products; former chief operating officer

David Herzog, controller

Brian T. Schreiber, senior vice president, strategic planning

Martin J. Sullivan, former president and chief executive officer

Robert B. Willumstad, chief executive; former chairman

Bank of America

Gregory L. Curl, director of corporate planning

Kenneth D. Lewis, president, chairman, and chief executive officer

Brian T. Moynihan, president, global corporate and investment banking

Joe L. Price, chief financial officer

Barclays

Archibald Cox Jr., chairman, Barclays Americas

Jerry del Missier, president, Barclays Capital

Robert E. Diamond Jr., president, Barclays PLC; chief executive officer, Barclays Capital

Michael Klein, independent adviser

John S. Varley, chief executive officer

Berkshire Hathaway

Warren E. Buffett, chairman and chief executive officer

Ajit Jain, president, re-insurance unit

BlackRock

Larry Fink, chief executive officer

Blackstone Group

Peter G. Peterson, co-founder

Stephen A. Schwarzman, chairman, chief executive officer, and co-founder

John Studzinski, senior managing director

China Investment Corporation

Gao Xiqing, president

Citigroup

Edward Ned Kelly, head, global banking for the institutional clients group

Vikram S. Pandit, chief executive

Stephen R. Volk, vice chairman

Evercore Partners

Roger C. Altman, founder and chairman

Fannie Mae

Daniel H. Mudd, president and chief executive officer

Freddie Mac

Richard F. Syron, chief executive officer

Goldman Sachs

Lloyd C. Blankfein, chairman and chief executive officer

Gary D. Cohn, co-president and co-chief operating officer

Christopher A. Cole, chairman, investment banking

John F. W. Rogers, secretary to the board

Harvey M. Schwartz, head, global securities division sales

David Solomon, managing director and co-head, investment banking

Byron Trott, vice chairman, investment banking

David A. Viniar, chief financial officer

Jon Winkelried, co-president and co-chief operating officer

Greenlight Capital

David M. Einhorn, chairman and co-founder