Too Big To Fail - by Andrew Sorkin

简介（摘自豆瓣）

Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami. From inside the corner office at Lehman Brothers to secret meetings in South Korea, and the corridors of Washington, Too Big to Fail is the definitive story of the most powerful men and women in finance and politics grappling with success and failure, ego and greed, and, ultimately, the fate of the world’s economy.

“We’ve got to get some foam down on the runway!” a sleepless Timothy Geithner, the then-president of the Federal Reserve of New York, would tell Henry M. Paulson, the Treasury secretary, about the catastrophic crash the world’s financial system would experience.

Through unprecedented access to the players involved, Too Big to Fail re-creates all the drama and turmoil, revealing never disclosed details and elucidating how decisions made on Wall Street over the past decade sowed the seeds of the debacle. This true story is not just a look at banks that were “too big to fail,” it is a real-life thriller with a cast of bold-faced names who themselves thought they were too big to fail. 

读后感

正如很多人所说，这本书的情节性强，节奏紧凑，可以一口气看完。但正因为更多注重描写，反而很少评论。和之前读的The Big Short有不少反差。

因为先读过The Big Short，加上之前种种对华尔街的负面描写，读书前和刚读书时就戴上了有色眼镜，想暗暗使劲从书中看到金融家们的自私自利，但作者还算中立的描写终究没让我的小心思得逞。书中有不少情节是讲Paulson他们如何在危机已经形成的时候做出应对的，无论之前监管者有多么的失职，过去的都是sunk cost，要往前看，按照最新情况来应对才是职业精神。

另外，看银行家之间做交易都是在几天内甚至几小时内完成，不知道是觉得他们的judgement真心好，还是其实很多也是凭着感觉走。不过书上起码有写他们做了一定的due diligence的。