Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

You will like this book if: (1) You quickly grab the magazine People out of a stack that includes the WSJ and Economist. (2) You like the way children's books have a purely linear plot trajectory without the bothersome nuance or multilayers of say an Iago character. (3) You really think that despite the press reporting that the little time left in W's administration made it impossible for Paulson to accomplish much as Treasury Secretary (2006 to the end), Paulson took up the challenge of doing something big (see pg. 43 "Nothing could have played more effectively to his [Paulson's] immediate sense of buyer's remorse [on becoming Treasury Sec.]--and motivate him to overcome the challenge."). Really? Paulson decided "I'll show 'em" and set in motion the financial collapse? That isn't even what the author intended but that is what the page says. ----- I actually really expected and wanted to like this book. I was shocked at how bad it was. It is obvious the author is more interested in political connections and market timing of the book than actual reporting (with Fuld as the primary source). Maybe the mystery of complex derivatives clouds what's wrong with this book, so here is a simple thought experiment that explains it. Imagine you wanted to learn about the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound in 1989. You pick up a book written by a reporter for the New York Times who interviewed everyone involved in the spill. You have the following basic questions: Was Prince William Sound ecologically pristine or already spoiled prior to the spill? Was Prince William Sound considered a tricky run for tankers? What actions did the captain of the Valdez take immediately before it ran aground? Did Exxon prepare a risk assessment for this run? Did Exxon discuss double-hulled tankers specifically for this run to prevent oil spills? Did BP, Shell, or Chevron run tankers through this same run without incident? Is there a company that has always avoided spills? Sticking with this thought experiment, about fifty pages into the book you realize the author has passed by these basic questions. Instead, the book merely interlaces into the post-spill chronology trivial facts such as: what the lighthouse officer who took the emergency call from the Valdez ate the night before the spill, what the captain of the Valdez claimed was the biggest marlin he caught off the coast of South America, or what the Exxon executive who was sent to Alaska to manage PR said he shot in 18 holes of golf at Torrey Pines the day before the spill (there is about 1 per page in "Too Big to Fail"). The book then spends its remaining pages on this linear post-spill chronology of Exxon officers meeting with government officials. These conversations focus on how best to clean up the spilled oil. An epilogue does gloss over, untied to any actual reporting, what might have contributed to the spill. You are left wondering why you bothered to read the book. ----- With so much media glittering about, and much of it worth paying attention to, it stinks to get fooled by poor quality media. The lesson is that nonfiction books in print for only a few months are rarely harshly reviewed. A hopeful note is that these Amazon customer reviews of Dan Brown's latest fiction did seem to outpace any planted 5-star reviews. And a New York Times op-ed contributor wasn't afraid to hammer Brown on that book in the Book Review. But it is less likely to occur with nonfiction. If you are still reading these comments, I hope you save yourself from reading "Too Big to Fail" because it makes no attempt to analyze: What caused this financial crisis? What actions did these CEOs take before the crisis? How extraordinary were these responses to the crisis and how did they diverge from prior responses? Can future crises be avoided? What was different about JP Morgan, Chase, and Co.? Seriously, how hard would it be for a financial reporter to sit down with the financial records of all the major banks and investment banks and put together a mortgage-backed derivatives exposure graph for each company that shows where JP diverged? The post-crisis stock values of JP (JPM) and Citi (C) suggest this information is available in the public domain. Thus, the only plausible explanation for why the book avoids these questions is the author's lack of financial acumen. In view of this problem, the People magazine style reveals itself to be not just expedient but obligatory. The resulting storyline is simply, "Paulson said 'we are going to do...' and then the CEO responded '...'" without the context of: What caused the crisis?; How extraordinary was that response by Paulson in the context of prior crises?; Is Paulson's response likely to be successful 5 years from now?; Is another crisis likely? Without any effort to analyze these larger and more basic questions, the storyline is indistinguishable from a children's book. The lack of reporting in "Too Big to Fail" mirrors the lack of real worth in the pure arbitrage of mortgages. I defy anyone to post something they read in this book that was new information that changed their view of the cause of this financial crisis. Assuming no one is able to cite anything new, defenders of the book are left to claim it as a behind the scenes account of the events. How useful is that information when the important question is why some financial institutions were deemed in late 2008 too big to fail? I don't think a behind the scenes storyline adds anything to the larger and more basic question of what exactly makes an institution too big to fail. Maybe it is asking too much, but could a reporter with good sources and good analysis of empirical data show mathematically what line exactly in the sand Paulson and Bernanke committed our financial system to uphold as too big to fail? Then, using that mathematical model the even more interesting question becomes: would any Great Depression era financial institutions even have been deemed that big, ie, too big to fail, had Paulson and Bernanke applied that mathematical formula to the Great Depression? Restated, does the present top-heavy nature of our financial institutions (which might be even more pronounced than during the Great Depression) make the system indistinguishable from a state-run system and mean too big to fail is with us for good and antitrust laws should break up these institutions, or does the empirical analysis reveal something else? Those are the questions that I hoped a New York Times reporter would dig into, but the gulf between this book and those questions is: too big to describe. A final thought, did anyone ever suggest to Paulson or Bernanke a less than dollar for dollar bailout -- the recent Greek "haircut" bailout showed how this could be used, but why didn't Sorkin devote even a page to this question?