Quotes from Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

“While the financial crisis destroyed careers and reputations, and left many more bruised and battered, it also left the survivors with a genuine sense of invulnerability at having made it back from the brink. Still missing in the current environment is a genuine sense of humility.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, quote from Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

“There are no atheists in foxholes or ideologues in a financial crisis. Ben Bernanke”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, quote from Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

“Everyone thinks Goldman is so fucking smart,” he railed. “Just because Goldman says this is the right valuation, you shouldn’t assume it’s correct just because Goldman said it. My brother works at Goldman, and he’s an idiot!”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, quote from Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

“The numbers were, at best, guesstimates, and all three men knew it. The relevant figure would ultimately be the one that represented the most they could possibly ask from Congress without raising too many questions. Whatever that sum turned out to be, they knew they could count on (Interim Assistant Secretary of the Treasury) Kashkari to perform some sort of mathematical voodoo to justify it:”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, quote from Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

“This generation of Wall Street CEOs could be the ones to forfeit America’s trust. When the history of the Great Recession is written, they can be singled out as the bonus babies who were so shortsighted that they put the economy at risk and contributed to the destruction of their own companies. Or they can acknowledge how Americans’ trust has been lost and take the first steps to earn it back.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, quote from Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

“The battle between bankers and traders is the closest thing to class warfare on Wall Street. Investment banking was esteemed as an art, while trading was more like a sport, something that required skill, but not necessarily brains or creativity.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, quote from Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

“Size, we are told, is not a crime. But size may, at least, become noxious by reason of the means through which it was attained or the uses to which it is put. — Louis Brandeis, Other People’s Money: And How the Bankers Use It, 1913”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, quote from Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

“In an industry based on analyzing raw data, Gregory was defiantly a gut man. He was also an advocate of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which used Jungian psychological principles to identify people as having one of sixteen distinct personality types. (A typical question was, “Do you prefer to focus on the outer world or on your own inner world?”) Gregory used Myers-Briggs results to help make personnel decisions. It was his conviction that individual expertise was overrated; if you had smart, talented people, you could plug them into any role, as sheer native talent and brains trumped experience. Gregory seemed to revel in moving people around, playing chess with their careers.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, quote from Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

“Goldman’s top four officers could not sell more than 10 percent of their Goldman shares until 2011, or until Buffett sold his own, even if they left the firm. He had explained his rationale for this condition to Blankfein by saying, “If I’m buying the horse, I’m buying the jockey, too.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, quote from Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

“Both had started in commercial paper, probably the sleepiest, least risky part of the firm’s business. Fixed-income trading was nothing like Fuld and Gregory knew in their day: Banks were creating increasingly complex products many levels removed from the underlying asset. This entailed a much greater degree of risk, a reality that neither totally grasped and showed remarkably little interest in learning more about. While the firm did employ a well-regarded chief risk officer, Madelyn Antoncic, who had a PhD in economics and had worked at Goldman Sachs, her input was virtually nil. She was often asked to leave the room when issues concerning risk came up at executive committee meetings, and in late 2007, she was removed from the committee altogether.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, quote from Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

“his way of thinking, the spreading of risk could actually exacerbate the consequences of otherwise isolated problems—a view not shared by his original boss at the Fed, Alan Greenspan. “These changes appear to have made the financial system able to absorb more easily a broader array of shocks, but they have not eliminated risk,” he said in a speech in 2006. “They have not ended the tendency of markets to occasional periods of mania and panic. They have not eliminated the possibility of failure of a major financial intermediary. And they cannot fully insulate the broader financial system from the effects of such a failure.” Geithner understood that the Wall Street boom would eventually falter, and he knew from his experience in Japan that it was not likely to end well. Of course, he had no way of knowing precisely how or when that would happen, and no amount of studying or preparation could have equipped him to deal with the events that began in early March 2008.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, quote from Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

“The drive home was excruciating; Fuld sat in the backseat feeling paralyzed. Gone was the bluster, the gusto, the fight. He was still angry, but really, he was just sad. For once, it was completely quiet except for the hum of the engine and the tires rolling down the highway.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, quote from Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

“Building computer models based on years of historical data on corporate bonds, they concluded that this new device—a credit default swap—seemed foolproof. The odds of a wave of defaults occurring simultaneously were remote, short of another Great Depression. So, absent a catastrophe of that magnitude, the holders of the swap could expect to receive millions of dollars in premiums a year. It was like free money.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, quote from Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

“The pyramidlike structure of a collateralized debt obligation is a beautiful thing—if you are fascinated by the intricacies of financial engineering. A banker creates a CDO by assembling pieces of debt according to their credit ratings and their yields. The mistake made by AIG and others who were lured by them was believing that the ones with the higher credit ratings were such a sure bet that the companies did not bother to set aside much capital against them in the unlikely event that the CDO would generate losses.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, quote from Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

“In 2007 one of its biggest clients, Goldman Sachs, demanded that AIG put up billions of dollars more in collateral as required under its swaps contracts. AIG disclosed the existence of the collateral dispute in November. At the December conference, Charles Gates, a longtime insurance analyst for Credit Suisse, asked pointedly what it meant that “your assessment of certain super-senior credit default swaps and the related collateral . . . differs significantly from your counterparties.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, quote from Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

“Wilson had a compelling reason for having recommended Herlihy: He had been involved in some of the biggest takeover battles in corporate America. Earlier in the year he had helped advise JP Morgan Chase in its acquisition of Bear Stearns. His firm—Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz—was synonymous with corporate warfare. One of its founding partners, Martin Lipton, had devised among the most famous of antitakeover defenses, the “poison pill.” If Treasury was planning a government-led hostile takeover—the first in history—then Herlihy was certainly the lawyer they wanted.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, quote from Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

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Popular quotes

“I didn't just foster the delusions. I lived them. Even after the world crashed, I clung to them. But after he died, I told myself no more. No more brave fronts or false hopes or pretending everything's okay when nothing is. I thought I was being tough by pretending, calling it being optimistic, brave, keeping my head up or whatever bullshit seemed to fit the moment. That's not tough. That's the very definition of soft.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Infinite Sea

“How they love the old boxcar!”
― Gertrude Chandler Warner, quote from The Boxcar Children

“Where's my sister?"
"She's setting up the island we found tonight."
Galen shakes his head. "You slithering eel. You might have told me what you were up to."
Toraf laughs. "Oh sure. 'Hey, Galen, I need to borrow Emma for a few minutes so I can kiss her, okay?' Didn't see that going over very well."
"You think your surprise attack went over better?"
Toraf shrugs. "I'm satisfied."
"I could have killed you today."
"Yeah."
"Don't ever do that again."
"Wasn't planning on it. Thought it was real sweet of you to defend your sister's honor. Very brotherly." Toraf snickers.
"Shut up."
"I'm just saying."
Galen runs a hand through his hair. "I only saw Emma. I forgot all about Rayna."
"I know, idiot. That's why I let you hit me fifty-eight times. That's what I would do if someone kissed Rayna."
"Fifty-nine times."
"Don't get carried away, minnow. By the way, was Emma boiling mad or just a little heated? Should I keep my distance for a while?"
Galen snorts. "She laughed so hard I thought she'd pass out. I'm the one in trouble."
"Shocker. What'd you do?"
"The usual." Hiding his feelings. Blurting out the wrong thing. Acting like a territorial bull shark.
Toraf shakes his head. "She won't put up with that forever. She already thinks you only want to change her so she can become another of your royal subjects."
"She said that?" Galen scowls. "I don't know what's worse. Letting her think that, or telling her the truth about why I'm helping her to change."
"In my opinion, there's nothing to tell her unless she can actually change. And so far, she can't."
"You don't think she's one of us?"
Toraf shrugs. "Her skin wrinkles. It's kind of gross. Maybe she's some sort of superhuman. You know, like Batman."
Galen laughs. "How do you know about Batman?"
"I saw him on that black square in your living room. He can do all sorts of things other humans can't do. Maybe Emma is like him."
"Batman isn't real. He's just a human acting like that so other humans will watch him."
"Looked real to me."
"They're good at making it look real. Some humans spend their whole lives making something that isn't real look like something that is."
"Humans are creepier than I thought. Why pretend to be something you're not?"
Galen nods. To take over a kingdom, maybe? "Actually, that reminds me. Grom needs you."
Toraf groans. "Can it wait? Rayna's getting all cozy on our island right about now."
"Seriously. I don't want to know."
Toraf grins. "Right. Sorry. But you can see my point, right? I mean, if Emma were waiting for you-"
"Emma wouldn't be waiting for me. I wouldn't have left."
"Rayna made me. You've never hit me that hard before. She wants us to get along. Plus, there's something I need to tell you, but I didn't exactly get a change to."
"What?"
"Yesterday when we were practicing in front of your house, I sensed someone. Someone I don't know. I made Emma get out of the water while I went to investigate."
"And she listened to you?"
Toraf nods. "Turns out, you're the only one she disobeys.”
― Anna Banks, quote from Of Poseidon

“The menfolk, they die, all right. And it's us women who walk around, like the Bible says, and mourn. The menfolk, they die, and it's over for them, but we women, we have to keep on living and try to forget what they done to us.”
― James Baldwin, quote from Go Tell It on the Mountain

“We're allowed to do anything in this world until someone says we ain't allowed and that someone can back it up.”
― L.A. Meyer, quote from Bloody Jack

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