Book Report: Too Big to Fail

Book Summary

"Too big to fail" is a book written by Andrew Ross Sorkin in the year 2009. It is not just another essay on the causes of the crisis, even if after reading it feels like something lighter. He has written a young and talented financial journalist for the New York Times, and if you ever wondered what really happened in the corridors of power in those days of September 2008, when the world was about to sink along with the investment bank Lehman Brothers, here you would find many answers. Above all, it covers all the steps that led to the crisis, reconstructed from confidential documents, internal sources, secret meetings with the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury. It does not only contain quotes from press releases, but the famous phrase, the lives and careers, the anger, the errors, the ability of actors invalid or incompetent, are present in the book.

In the book , the plot twists and great suspense if, in fact, in this major survey - report - true story set among the muffled corridors of economic and political power of the U.S. and around the world. The story begins long before when he arrived on the front pages of newspapers around the world: first Sorkin says the rescue of another of the "big five" of Wall Street, Bear Stearns sold to JP Morgan in early 2008.A prelude to the big drop in autumn. Sorkin told the government about the bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two companies specialized in issuing loans that really were too big to fail, too big to fail, as well as the insurance giant AIG, and then develops the whole debate on the non- rescue of Lehman, which unleashed a storm in global markets, paving the way to the crisis (Sorkin, pp 141).

Sorkin is a chronicle of one minute of each step of the crisis that helps you identify and understand complex events. However, its chief merit is at the bottom of another, knowing how to write a great story to novel, with the rise and fall of its protagonists. The finance and economics, in the worst time of its collapse, are not just numbers analyzed by leading columnists. The journalist reveals the characters and makes us enter into the boards of an investment bank on the verge of meltdown. Too big, to fail is a long book, not always easy, but to read it with deep attention. There are true portraits of the protagonists - often negative - of the crisis. Made portraits of a few lights, shadows and many human weaknesses, to people who often started from nothing and then gain everything and lose it again for errors unjustifiable.

Rising house prices were facilitated by a boom in credit. In the US, financing to households rose rapidly after 2000, driven largely by mortgages outstanding, historically low interest rates and financial innovation. Despite low interest rates, debt servicing relative to disposable income reached record highs. Credit booms ...