“The access is phenomenal, and it really is put together through a preposterously comprehensive series of interviews. Them all holed up in a room in the financial district trying to pull together the money to save AIG and not being able to do it. Dick Fuld comes off as an idiotic megalomaniac. The Goldman Sachs guys seem smarter than everyone else by a long shot. Paulson and Geithner get fairly sympathetic portraits, the women and Christoph Cox do NOT. The 3 AM phone calls, and the wrecked home lives bring this crisis home in very human terms. Paulson was always on the phone, and he seems to have had the best intentions in the world. This is about the crisis from the perspective of the elite, dealing with the highest echelons of decision making, and the aristocracy of the financial system, helicopters, Congressional sway, and all. Its a boys club, extraordinarily cut-throat, and with enormous consequences. He says the government should not have let Lehman fail, and argues for greater resolution. Its a very American piece of financial journalism- seduced by power, attracted to crisis, and tutting a finger at the absurd stakes of the game, while still being awed by the fact that these figures truly play it.”
bensbooks wrote this review Sunday, February 24, 2013.
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