The reality, however, was different.Ten years ago, on Saturday, September 13th, 2008, the world was about to end.
The New York Federal Reserve was a zoo. Imagine NASA headquarters on the day a giant asteroid careens into the atmosphere. That was the New York Fed: all hands on deck, peak human panic.
The crowd included future Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, then-Treasury Secretary (and former Goldman Sachs CEO) Hank Paulson, the representatives of multiple regulatory offices, and the CEOs of virtually every major bank in New York, each toting armies of bean counters and bankers.
The asteroid metaphor fit. In the twin collapses of top-five investment bank Lehman Brothers and insurance giant AIG, Wall Street saw a civilization-imperiling ball of debt hurtling its way.
The legend of that meeting, as immortalized in hagiographic reconstructions like Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big to Fail, is that the tough-minded bank honchos found a way to scrape up just enough cash to steer the debt-comet off course.
Matt Taibbi
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...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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