Some men wrest a living from nature and with their hands; this is called work.
Some men wrest a living from those who wrest a living from nature and with their hands; this is called trade.
Some men wrest a living from those who wrest a living from those who wrest a living from nature and with their hands; this is called finance.
- Epigram from 19th century Great Britain
For the past decade I have covered Wall Street and deal making for the New York Times and have been fortunate to do so during a period that has seen any number of remarkable developments in the American economy. But never have I witnessed such fundamental and dramatic changes in business paradigms and the spectacular self-destruction of storied institutions.
This extraordinary time has left us with a giant puzzle - a mystery, really - that still needs to be solved, so we can learn from our mistakes. This book is an effort to begin putting those pieces together.
At its core Too Big to Fail is a chronicle of failure - a failure that brought the world to its knees and raised questions about the very nature of capitalism. It is an intimate portrait of the dedicated and often baffled individuals who struggled - often at great personal sacrifice but just as often for self-preservation - to spare the world and themselves an even more calamitous outcome. It would be comforting to say that all the characters depicted in this book were able to cast aside their own concerns, whether petty or monumental, and join together to prevent the worst from happening. In some cases, they did. But as you'll see, in making their decisions, they were not immune to the fierce rivalries and power grabs that are part of the long-established cultures on Wall Street and in Washington.
In the end, this drama is a human one, a tale about the fallibility of people who thought they themselves were too big to fail.
- Andrew Ross Sorkin, Too Big To Fail
