Summary of Too Big to Fail

Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves, is a book by Andrew Ross Sorkin chronicling the 2008 financial crisis and the actions taken by government officials, bankers, and CEOs to prevent a complete collapse of the economy. The narrative focuses on the primary characters of the crisis including Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, and Timothy Geithner. It details the decisions they made to bail out large banks and the implications those decisions had on the economy and the country. The book also examines the moral and ethical implications of their decisions, the power of the banks, and the implications of the crisis on the lives of ordinary people. Ultimately, Sorkin suggests that the crisis revealed systemic flaws in the way banks, the government, and the public interacted and that change needs to be made to prevent a similar crisis from ever happening again.