Too Big To Fail

You might feel that you have maxed out on

the credit crunch, that you know it all. You

donʼt. But you have a chance to enter the

circle of trust and see the inner secretes by

picking up a copy of Too Big To Fail, by

Andrew Ross Sorkin.

Maybe Sorkin has access to a swarm of

nanobots, or maybe he has the personal

brain scans of all involved because the level

of detail in this book is astonishing. We are

talking deeply private stuff here and some of

it is explosive. We all have suspected that Goldman's runs

Street and that its tentacles have spread throughout

government. Read Sorkin's book and you will see your

suspicions confirmed.

One of the criticisms of this book, which I am not sure that

Sorkin can be blamed for, is that so many of the characters

have the same personality type. This becomes wearing after

a while. There is only so much testosterone you can take before

feeling as so you have been hammered over the head by the

fist of an alpha male.

For me, the key to the book was the passage where
Fuld attends a black tie do and encounters Hank Paulson.
 Paulson and Fuld were in regular contact at the time. Paulson
had repeatedly suggested to Fuld that he needed to find a buyer
for Lehman. It was an open secret that Lehman was on the ropes
and would be the next firm, after Bear Stearns to fail.

Fuld heard Paulson out. On his way home he sent an email from

 his Blackberry to members of his management team. He ran through

the list of things that were worrying Paulson. But he failed to mention

that Paulson's biggest concern was Lehman itself. That's the problem

with alpha males, they don't listen. The tragedy of the credit crisis was

that it was always someone else's problem. No one took ownership,

took responsibility.

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