The Weekend That Changed Wall Street: An Eyewitness Account
"Another source in the Treasury spoke with me, the sadness and frustration clear in his voice. 'It wasn't like a decision was made on Friday that these guys were just doomed and we were going to let them go. There was an attempt over that entire weekend to save them. And the fact is, we didn't. So in that sense it was a failure, and once Barclays pulled out, we didn't have any other options. We didn't have the legal authority to do anything differently. So I don't blame us for failing that...
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A first-person account of the white-knuckle weekend that brought the financial world to its knees and changed Wall Street forever, from America's most famous business reporter. During a single historic weekend (September 12-14, 2008) the fate of Lehman Brothers was sealed, Merrill Lynch barely survived, AIG became a ward of the federal government, and the roots of our seemingly strong economy teetered on the edge of collapse. As bankers and government officials scrambled to keep the economy from total collapse, and Americans tried to make sense of it all, top CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo spent the entire weekend taking frantic phone calls from the most powerful players on Wall Street and in Washington. Those CEOs, politicians, and dozens of other sources gave Bartiromo behind-the- scenes details on the crisis and its aftermath, the personalities involved, and the emotions at work during one of the most stressful periods in American economic history. Now she draws on her high-level network to provide an eyewitness account of the biggest events of the financial crisis, including exclusive interviews with former treasury secretary Henry Paulson, former AIG chairman Hank Greenberg, former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain, and former Bear Stearns chairman Ace Greenberg, among many others. Her sources candidly divulged personal and unreported information. For example, during a commercial break on her show, Paulson, who had been explaining the government bailout package, told her, "In six months, you will understand why we did what we did." It wasn't apparent then, but months later it was revealed that the government's secrecy regarding who got the bailout money was intended to hide the shocking financial condition of Citigroup-the largest bank in the world. Writing with both authority and dramatic flair, Bartiromo not only weaves a thrilling and fresh account of the events of that fateful weekend but provides a unique analysis of the crisis and its aftermath She shows how decades of unbridled risk taking led to one of the biggest and most dramatic economic meltdowns in history and tackles the big questions: is any company too big to fail-and if so should it be? Should the government spend taxpayer dollars to bail out companies whose plights are largely the result of their own mismanagement? And finally, what have we learned from this crisis? Will we return to business as usual or has Wall Street really changed? The Financial Times One of the 50 people who shaped the last decade . . . The CNBC anchor has made the transition to the inner circle of the global business elite.
Introduction: Eyewitness to the Crisis 1Prologue: Riding High Before the Fall 51 Nightmare on Liberty Street 152 The Bubble Machine 353 Zombies at Lehman 594 Down to the Wire 835 Death Sentence and Champagne 996 Fallout 1077 Popcorn and Dominoes 1278 The Aftershocks 1479 A Greek Tragedy 17110 Capitalism in the Balance 189Acknowledgments 209Notes 213Index 225
\ Forbes“[Bartiromo is] at the top of her game.”\ \ \ \ \ The Financial Times“One of the 50 people who shaped the last decade . . . The CNBC anchor has made the transition to the inner circle of the global business elite.”\ \ \ Vanity Fair“She has interviewed just about everyone who’s anyone in finance and politics, from presidents and Federal Reserve chairmen to Middle Eastern sheikhs. Today, there are few, if any, CEOs in America who do not return her calls and fewer still who turn down a chance to be interviewed by her.”\ \
