Lustig offers a comprehensive discussion and analysis of Paulson’s memoir. When Hank Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, was appointed in 2006 to become the nations next Secretary of the Treasury. In a guest book review, noted author Joshua A. This is the first high-level insider’s account of the federal response to the crisis a very rough draft of history, but a valuable one, conveying with candor the intensity and fear of the sustained, exhausting effort to keep pace with a banking crisis whose scale had not been seen since the 1930s. “On the Brink” can serve as a casebook for crisis management, demonstrating the skill and sheer endurance required to handle a total collapse of confidence in the financial markets. Paulson’s visceral approach, in a detailed, day-by-day accounting, provides a close-up, field-level vantage point on the increasingly daring ad hoc actions he took to save what he always refers to with due reverence as “the system.” His book is a timely reminder, as that system slowly returns to its old ways, of just how near it came to the abyss. The one-time Dartmouth offensive lineman narrates his frontline experience of the financial crisis essentially from a footballer’s perspective, as a relentless series of crushing tackles that he and his team absorbed as they desperately improvised novel blocking schemes to stave off a catastrophic loss. Arrives by Thu, Feb 16 Buy On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the. Why? 'I knew that unless I explicitly said this, some of them might think that Good Old Hank would come to the rescue.Henry Paulson’s new memoir is, quite literally, a blow-by-blow recounting of the state of economic emergency that consumed much of his brief tenure as Treasury secretary at the end of the Bush administration. Yet Paulson told Wall Street bankers that there could be no government money in a Lehman rescue. As Lehman tottered on the brink, Paulson and Geithner were prepared to consider a 'Bear Stearns-style rescue,' he writes. 'The market was determined to call our bluff,' he says in describing Bear Stearns' shotgun marriage to JPMorgan Chase.Įach rescue upped the market ante. Yet his biggest opponent was the market itself. Judging from this account, Paulson worried about what his 'old friends' in Beijing would think the Chinese, after all, held hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. 'You started with Nixon and you're going to end with Bush?' she said in May 2006 after learning of his nomination.

He even had to contend with his own mother, who had supported his work for the Nixon White House but disliked Bush.

What we get is a persuasive portrait of a man caught between market, taxpayer and politician. The narrative goes behind closed doors as Paulson and his team struggled to prop up the wobbling dominos - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, American International Group and on and on.

On the brink by henry m paulson jr