On the Brink

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Understandably, the lawmakers pushed me to provide a dollar figure. But I was purposef^^Hy vague. "We don't have the mimber yet, and we want to work with you on this," I said. "It's got to be big enough to ni^ke a dilTerence."
How big was "big," th'iy wanted to know.
"We need to buy hundreds of biQions of dollars of assets," I said. I knew better than to utter the word trillion. TLat would have caused cardiac arrest. "We need an announcement tonight to calm the market, and legislation next week," I said.
What would happen if we didn't get the authorities we sought, I was asked.
"May God help us all," I replied.
When Hank Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, was appointed in 2006 to become the nation's next secretary of the Treasury, he knew that his move from Wall Street to Washington would be daunting i and challenging.
But Paulson had no idea that a year later, he would find himself at the very epicenter of the world's most cataclysmic financial crisis since the... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Understandably, the lawmakers pushed me to provide a dollar figure. But I was purposef^^Hy vague. "We don't have the mimber yet, and we want to work with you on this," I said. "It's got to be big enough to ni^ke a dilTerence."
How big was "big," th'iy wanted to know.
"We need to buy hundreds of biQions of dollars of assets," I said. I knew better than to utter the word trillion. TLat would have caused cardiac arrest. "We need an announcement tonight to calm the market, and legislation next week," I said.
What would happen if we didn't get the authorities we sought, I was asked.
"May God help us all," I replied.
When Hank Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, was appointed in 2006 to become the nation's next secretary of the Treasury, he knew that his move from Wall Street to Washington would be daunting i and challenging.
But Paulson had no idea that a year later, he would find himself at the very epicenter of the world's most cataclysmic financial crisis since the Great Depression. Major institutions including Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Merrill Lynch, and Citigroup, among others—all steeped in rich, longstanding tradition—literally teetered at the edge of collapse. Panic ensnared international mar-kets. Worst of all, the credit crisis spread to all parts of the U.S. economy and grew more ominous with each passing day, destroying jobs across America and undermining the financial security that millions had spent decades building.
This was truly a once-in-a-lifetime economic nightmare. Events no one had thought possible were happening in quick succession, and people all over the globe were terrified that the continuing downward spiral would bring unprecedented chaos. All eyes turned to the United States Treasury secretary to avert the disaster.
From the man who was in the very middle of this perfect economic storm.

ON THE BRINK is Hank Paulson's fast-paced, first-person retelling of the key decisions that had to be made with lightning speed. Paulson puts the reader in the room for all the intense moments as he addressed urgent market conditions, weighed critical decisions, and debated policy and economic considerations with all the notable players—including the CEOs of top Wall Street firms as well as Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, Sheila Bair, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain, and then-President George W. Bush.
More than an account about numbers and credit risks gone bad, ON THE BRINK is an extraordinary story about people and poHtics—all brought together during the world's impending financial Armageddon.
Henry M. Paulson, Jr., served under President George W. Bush as the 74th secretary of the Treasury from July 2006 until January 2009.

Hank Paulson is proud to support the work of Homeownership Preservation Foundation, which owns and operates the Homeowner's HOPE Hotline, 888-995-HOPE, a service that counsels families to avoid foreclosure. Vissza