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| | Features | Current Events, Business, Finance and Financial Collapse
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| | Description | From the Foreword, by Rep. Barney Frank, especially written for the trade paper edition:
"For many people, what will be most striking about this foreword is the fact that I wrote it. It's not every day a partisan, liberal Democrat gets a call from a conservative, high-ranking member of the George W. Bush administration asking for a favorable introduction to anything. But when former secretary of the Treasury Henry M. Paulson, Jr., called, I was quick to agree to express in print my enthusiasm for his excellent recounting of some of the most important and controversial events in our recent national history."
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ON THE BRINK is Hank Paulson's first-person account of the catastrophic economic events of 2008. From the man who was in the very middle of this perfect economic storm, 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 of 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 politics-all brought together during the world's impending financial Armageddon.
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| | Product Details | | Author: | Henry M. Paulson | | Hardcover: | 496 pages | | Publisher: | Business Plus | | Publication Date: | February 01, 2010 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 0446561932 | | Product Length: | 6.5 inches | | Product Width: | 2.0 inches | | Product Height: | 9.25 inches | | Product Weight: | 1.64 pounds | | Package Length: | 9.1 inches | | Package Width: | 6.2 inches | | Package Height: | 1.6 inches | | Package Weight: | 1.65 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 115 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 115 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
95 of 126 found the following review helpful:
 Insider narrative, but still ignores a few important factors Feb 01, 2010
By Jim Galt
A book like this should be read only along with books like The Failure of Risk Management: Why It's Broken and How to Fix It or The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. These books are about the much broader topics of risk management and risk in finance, respectively, but they do put On the Brink in context.
Paulson has written a detailed, blow by blow, narrative account of several specific meetings leading up to and during the financial crisis. Less of the book deals with stepping outside of these meetings to analyze other specific causes, but there is some of that. The reader has to be careful of an attempt by Paulson to recast his own role in a more favorable light, but I haven't seen anything detailed enough to specifically contradict him, yet.
Paulson does mention an interesting and almost complete list of players in this crisis - Freddie, Fannie, Bernanke, Bush, etc. But he is almost silent on some of the more subtle players like the mathematical models that underestimated these risks (Taleb and Hubbard do and excellent job of this). He reiterates throughout the book that the events seemed "impossible" and yet they are events that seem to happen once or twice a century (Especially considering some of the relaxed regulation and oversight that preceeeded it).
He does mention the role of Credit Default Swaps in the crisis but not, say, the Gaussian Copula, Options, or Value at Risk. The use of such methods are at least partly to blame.
The reader has to assume Paulson's agenda of getting history to come out the way that casts him the way he would like to see it. But it is still an excellent account. We should like to see the accounts of Bernanke and Geithner someday and compare them side-by-side.
32 of 42 found the following review helpful:
 Apologies for Greed Jan 25, 2011
By Dave C
Like so many "over the shoulder" assessments of major historical events, Mr. Paulson's account is very self-serving.
He doesn't bother to address why - when the government had tremendous leverage in working out the bailout of AIG - it did next to nothing in holding banks like Goldman Sachs accountable for their poor decision-making. So AIG, propped up by American taxpayers, paid 100 cents on the dollar for the credit default swaps purchased by Goldman Sachs. These swaps in themselves were a suspect approach to managing risk. Moreover, the government never required the investment firms - whose senior management made atrocious gambles - to replace these inept executives (such as GS's Lloyd "We're doing God's work" Blankfein) although they didn't hesitate to take out the head of GM (Rick Wagoner)when we bailed out the auto industry.
So how to explain Mr. Paulson's role in all this and his self-justifying apologies for greed? Well here's an astonishing coincidence: he's the former CEO of Goldman Sachs. Surprise, surprise! And another tidbit about where Mr. Paulson acquired his ethical compass: he was a special assistant to John Ehrlichman in the Nixon White House.
I invite people to read this book, but I would advise against attaching any credibility to Mr. Paulson's view of the near collapse of our financial system.
6 of 7 found the following review helpful:
An good view of how the gov't dealt with the finanical crisis Nov 15, 2010
By John Forman
"Author -The Essentials of Trading"
On the Brink is basically a diary of Paulson's time as Treasury Secretary, which ran from 2006 to 2008. That, of course, encompasses the most dramatic period of the financial crisis, running from when things started coming unglued in 2007 to the point at the end of the Bush administration when the financial markets were just about finally stabilized. The book details the sequence of events which covers the Bear Stearns take-over, the Lehman collapse, the receivership of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the AIG bailout, TARP and just about everything in between.
This is NOT a history of the financial crisis. Paulson doesn't really get into the "How did we get here?" in any dedicated or focused fashion (for something more along those lines you may want to read Financial Shock by Mark Zandi). This book is Paulson telling the story of how Treasury, the Fed, the FDIC, the SEC, Congress, the President and others worked together to try to resolve the problems facing the financial markets during the timeframe in question from his perspective. As such, one may be inclined to think of it as an individual trying to establish his legacy. Perhaps it is, but I also found it to be a very honest telling. The book doesn't shy away from Paulson's insecurity at different points, or the impact the long hours and intense stress had. I didn't come away from the book thinking Paulson had portrayed himself as the hero of the tale. If anything, he spends considerable time talking about the tireless work of the numerous people involved.
From a reading perspective, I found the book well-paced and fairly easy to get through in general terms. I think Paulson does a very good job of reflecting the uncertainty and rapid development of events during the timespan in question. He also presents an interesting view of some of the major political movers of the time, many of whom are still involved in things today. We in the public don't often get that sort of thing, as we mostly see the made-for-TV moments of press events and committee testimony.
On the negative side, my guess is that some subjects might trip up the reader who isn't familiar with the deeper elements of the financial markets. The book could have probably done with explanations at a few points to make things more clear for the lay person - like why short selling was so bad, why AIG was bleeding cash, etc. The lack of such explanations does not detract from the main narrative, but no doubt some readers would find them useful in helping understand why things were the way they were.
Overall, I think On the Brink is a very worthwhile read for those interested in understanding how things developed and progressed during the financial crisis.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 on the brink Oct 05, 2011
By oogiez
I generally agree with some of the critics that Mr. Paulson's book is self-serving in many respects, but it was still avery good read, especially if you want to see an inside view of what went on in politics and finance during this country's recent economic crisis. It really "woke me up" in the sense that I realized how uninformed I have been concerning our Country's governance. His job or Geithner's or Bernanke's is not a job I would envy or want. In addition to being the anointed ones, they are also prisoners of history and popular opinion, all in all a rather difficult and unenviable life. The Tea Party rants and raves against them, but I am convinced they performed a necessary act which actually did prevent a true economic meltdown, a meltdown which would have made most of us envy those people who lived through the 1932 depression. I mean that; if you read the book you begin to have an understanding of this complicated Global economy we are living in and how all of our lives are inextricably tied to it. For better or worse, we are all married to it. If someone can come up with a better financial system than what we have now, I would be all for it. But for the moment, at least, I will tip my hat to these financial masters and offer them a simple "thank you" for what they have done.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Can't give 0 stars for this traitor's apologist so 1 will have to do Sep 07, 2011
By Doubting Thomas
Another "hey it's not REALLY our fault... really!" apologist for avarice, greed, and murdering orphans. Now he's writing a book for himself and the rest of the most destructive terrorists since 9-11. Arguably, they caused more fiscal damage (destroyed ~33 trillion USD in wealth since 2006) and if you count the additional suicides above the rate in 2005, 86,000 deaths. So they killed more people AND destroyed more wealth than the people who rammed two planes into the WTC, one into the Pentagon and one into a cornfield. We've been going after the wrong people this whole time... go figure.
When I read this book, it was similar to viewing the crisis through a polarizing lens. It blocked out all of the information along the axis that would make Goldman look bad, and skewed the information about the rest of the wall street morons who didn't know enough about math to realize that their models were hopelessly inadequate. If you want a real idea of why they're such fools, read "On Default Correlation: A Copula Function Approach", by David Xi. Then read the conclusion- HE SAYS CLEARLY THAT IT'S AN APPROXIMATE MODEL AND NOT AN EXACT MEASURE. It's based off of Gaussian electrostatics and magnetism, like all of Carl's other work. I guess the hedge fund managers who used David's function were too busy wallowing in their recently appropriated wealth to bother trying to understand the mechanics of what was actually making them money.
See all 115 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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