Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the FinancialSystem--and Themselves

the uptick rule—regulation that had been introduced by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1938 to prevent investors from continually shorting a stock that was falling. (In other words, before a stock could be shorted, the price had to rise, indicating that there were active buyers for it in the market. Theoretically, the rule would prevent s

In a matter of hours, Merrill Lynch, with a history of nearly one hundred years as one of the most storied names on Wall Street, would be sold to Bank of America for the biggest premium in the history of banking mergers. It was, as one newspaper later put it, as if Wal-Mart were buying Tiffany’s.

Only Alan Blinder, once a Fed vice chairman and a former Princeton colleague of Bernanke’s, defended the Fed. Blinder told this tale:

Fresh on their minds was the memo that Dick Fuld had sent out the previous night: “The past several months have been extraordinarily challenging, culminating in our bankruptcy filing,” he wrote. “This has been very painful on all of you, both personally and financially. For this, I feel horrible.” To some angry employees, it was an extraordinary un

“We never go up and propose legislation to do the debt ceiling. We just simply arrive at the fact that we have to do it and literally tell Congress they have to do it. They do it because they’re too scared not to do it.

While the firm did employ a well-regarded chief risk officer, Madelyn Antoncic, who had a PhD in economics and had worked at Goldman Sachs, her input was virtually nil. She was often asked to leave the room when issues concerning risk came up at executive committee meetings, and in late 2007, she was removed from the committee altogether.

But the meeting quickly degenerated from a promising effort to reach a consensus into a partisan fracas after the House Republican leader, John Boehner of Ohio, announced that House Republicans would not support the bailout, but would instead propose an alternative that would involve insuring mortgages with a fund paid for by Wall Street. When Demo

At the very height of the market, Walsh concluded his last great deal, a joint transaction with Bank of America, committing $17.1 billion in debt plus $4.6 billion in bridge equity to finance the purchase of Archstone-Smith, a collection of premium apartment complexes and other high-end real estate. The properties were excellent, but the price was

The firm was making bigger bets than it would ever be good for and nobody in the executive office seemed to understand or care. To criticize the firm’s direction was to be branded a traitor and tossed out the door.