I just finished the bestseller “Too big too fail”, delivering a behind-the scenes and moment-by-moment account of the months between the fire sale of Bear Sterns in spring 2008 and the announcement of the biggest bailout in history in October 2008. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews with the key players the Author Andrew Sorkin of the New York Times was able to write a kind of real-life thriller on the struggle of overpaid bankers and overwhelmed politicans to save the financial systems, there companies, jobs and even more so their egos. A gripping book one reads with disbelief on the lack of self-awareness and competence of main players, but also a lot of amusements on how the “big” world of finance and business comes down to surreal realities in the face of disaster.

One of these hard to belive events is a check over USD 9 billion! that literally saved Morgan Stanley and the jobs of its 45.000 employees in the very last minute. Hand delivered by a Japanese delegation and picked up by a banker wearing flip-flops….

This entry was posted on Friday, March 5th, 2010 at 10:04 am and is filed under Crazy world of banking, Weekend Reading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.