Too Big to Fail

This book informed my macroeconomic thinking on the way banks and companies have long been twined and the complex decisions that ultimately somebody—whether company boards or government regulators—need to make when they fail.

This was a perfect study for my own research into the near collapse of the early Hormel company and the reason why it still exists today; Sorkin’s chosen title would apply. Companies have an impact, both good and sometimes bad, and our regional and national economies often suffer from their hubris and greed.

Sorkin’s master storytelling kept me riveted and mesmerized all the way through six hundred… show more.

This is, for want of a better word, financial porn.

It won’t explain the underlying issues or even proximate triggers for the global financial crisis of 2008, but no one has ever written a financial book as titillating as Too Big to Fail. Sorkin really brings you into the rooms of power and conveys the sweaty panic that gripped the financial system as it careened over the edge. 

This is the definitive book about events in and around the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, the most globally significant banking crash since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The centerpiece is the brilliantly told, ‘in-the-room’ drama of the weekend Lehman Brothers collapsed. Tense and fearless, it is a vivid characterisation of the big beasts responsible for both the disaster and the rescue and of the desperate interplay between them.