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On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial Syste |  |
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On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial Syste | |
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 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 markets. 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 millions of families had spent their lifetimes 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.
This, then, is Hank Paulson's first-person account. From the man who was in the very middle of this perfect economic storm, On the Brink is Paulson's fast-paced 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 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.
The pace of events during the financial crisis of 2008 was truly breathtaking. In this book, I have done my best to describe my actions and the thinking behind them during that time, and to convey the breakneck speed at which events were happening all around us.
I believe the most important part of this story is the way Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, and I worked as a team through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. There can't be many other examples of economic leaders managing a crisis who had as much trust in one another as we did. Our partnership proved to be an enormous asset during an incredibly difficult period. But at the same time, this is my story, and as hard as I have tried to reflect the contributions made by everyone involved, it is primarily about my work and that of my talented and dedicated team at Treasury.
--Henry M. Paulson
We spoke with Henry M. Paulson in late January 2010, just before the release of On the Brink. You can listen to parts one and two of the Omnivoracious Podcast of the interview, and read a full transcript, in addition to these excerpts:
Amazon.com: You accepted the job as Treasury secretary in 2006, with some reluctance. Did you have any idea what you were getting into?
Paulson: I had a pretty clear idea that there would be a credit crisis sometime when I was in Washington. And I told the president I thought there'd be one, and the first major meeting I had with him I spent just talking about that topic. But I did not anticipate a crisis of the magnitude we faced--didn't anticipate that at all--and I certainly was bordering on naive in my understanding of the regulatory powers and authorities in Washington.
Amazon.com: You talked about [Ben] Bernanke's great knowledge of history. How much of a guide could history be?
Paulson: I can answer that two ways. First of all, history is a guide in one very real sense: that if you let the financial system collapse, and don't do enough to stave off disaster, the people who are going to suffer, the innocent victims, are going to be the American people. It's not going to be the banks, or the financial sector. So you need to do everything you can to put out the fire before it gets out of control. I think to that extent history was an important guide.
Otherwise, there wasn't much you could learn from history. That's a big lesson, but we were dealing with a financial system and markets very different from what had existed many years ago. Huge concentration in the industry, so if you had two or three firms go down in succession you'd have a domino effect. The whole system could collapse, and it wouldn't take much to have unemployment levels equal to what we had at the Great Depression, and it could happen very quickly. And we didn't have the tools we needed to work with. The regulatory system hadn't been updated since the Great Depression, essentially; the regulatory authorities hadn't. We didn't have the authorities for dealing with major non-banks, and winding them down. So in many ways what were doing was we were dealing with--I said in the book--duct tape and baling wire. We were making do with the authorities we had, which were woefully inadequate.
Amazon.com: And scrambling to get more authories.
Paulson: And scrambling to get more authorities. And in many ways this book is the story of the collision of politics and markets, and it's the story of a race against time to get more authorities. And I think one of the things that really comes through in the book is all of the different elements of the crisis that were coming at us simultaneously.
You could just see it. We could see it and it was one of the most frustrating--when I look at the things I could have done better, there were a lot of them and they come out in the book, but the communications challenges were huge. I mean, I sat there when the capital markets froze, before we went to Congress, and the money markets weren't working, and I just tried to think about how to explain this. Because I knew--I was seeing major, blue-chip industrial companies that were having trouble raising financing, so I knew with $3.4 trillion of money market funds, and with everything that was just getting ready to break apart, that if the system had collapsed there'd be thousands and thousands and thousands of mainstream industrial companies--middle-sized companies, large companies--that wouldn't be able to raise their short-term funding, finance their inventories, pay their people. People wouldn't have been able to pay their bills. This would have rippled through the economy. We would then have had--well, today we have over 10% unemployment. That's terrible. And that's after everything we've done. If the system had collapsed, when we were on the brink, unemployement easily could have been at the 25% level that we saw at the Great Depression, and the value destruction--much greater than we've had in terms of home prices and in terms of people's savings accounts and stock portfolios and so on.
Amazon.com: And now it looks like 2010 is going to be the year that the Obama administration tackles financial reform. In the last section of your book you mention some lessons that you took out of the crisis.
Paulson: Yeah, this is absolutely critical. And I am not shocked but very unhappy we don't have this yet, because people in this country are angry. Now they're very angry about bonuses and compensation levels on Wall Street, and rightfully so, after everything that's been done to save Wall Street. But what they should be angry about is that we have a system that made this necessary. And so what we need to do is we need to channel some of that anger toward fixing the system so never again do we have major financial institutions that are too big to fail.
Amazon.com: And do you worry that the further we get from the crisis the harder it will be to make those necessary reforms?
Paulson: Of course I do. The thing I worry about the most is I don't want another Treasury secretary to ever be sitting there like I was, without the tools and authorities you need to protect our country, protect our economy, and protect the people. It's a helpless feeling and it's a terrible feeling, and we should never be in this place. Our authorities need to be updated, our financial regulatory structure needs to be updated, and I'm optimistic about the future if we do this.
If we don't, we will have another crisis. You always do. That's the history of mankind. If you go back, as long as we've had banks and financial institutions, there have been excesses, no matter how hard you try to avoid them, and there are going to be financial crises, and we need the tools in place and the regulatory system in place to be able to have a better visibility into what's going on and then be able to put out the fire when it starts, without costing the American people as much as this one did.
Read the full interview.
《峭壁边缘:拯救世界金融》：美国前财长亨利·保尔森（Henry M.Paulson.Jr）最真挚的人生记忆、最真实的金融海啸纪录；了解世界金融的沉浮，感受全球经济的冷暖。
《纽约时报》、《金融时报》、亚马逊书店榜首畅销书。
著名经济学家王一江、巴曙松、汪丁丁、张军、易宪容、胡祖六、薛兆丰、钟伟、中国工商银行董事长姜建清、中国投资有限责任公司董事长楼继伟推荐阅读。
亨利·保尔森——作为金融危机的亲历者和可能影响历史的人，他的讲述让那段惊心动魄的日子变得格外鲜活。
我来到华盛顿是为了有所作为，而我认为，我们刚刚把这个国家和整个世界从危难边缘拉了回来。
——亨利·保尔森
保尔森是美国建国以来最有中国情结的财长，自始至终对于中国拥有一份真挚而持久的友好感情。即使在这本关于金融危机的回忆录中，他都情不自禁地提到了他与中国的特殊关系，记述了与中国朋友的相互信任和密切合作。
——清华大学中国经济研究中心联执主任 胡祖六
伴随着这本书的阅读过程，我无法摆脱的是这样一些问题：这事如果发生在中国呢？可能发生在中国吗？中国将来要为自己的金融变局支付什么样的代价呢？
——北京大学中国经济研究中心 汪丁丁
无论是大萧条还是次贷危机，是犹存的高盛还是已逝的雷曼，是壮年传奇的格林斯潘，还是万年落寞的保尔森，其行其言对短暂的人生而言皆可资治或赏析，对于恒久的历史而言都成尘埃寂然无痕。
——北京师范大学金融研究中心 钟伟
2008年从美国华尔街蔓延开来的全球金融危机留给这个世纪的最重要的话题肯定不再是金融危机发生的原因以及金融的脆弱性，而是我们如何拯救即将坍塌的金融系统。这本是一个大是大非的问题，它涉及我们已有的信仰、教条、理论和制度，涉及政府与市场、公共部门与私人部门、公平与正义以及法律和宪政。拯救危机行动中的主要人物、美国前财长保尔森的这部回忆录为我们披露了华盛顿高层以及他本人在这个大是大非问题上进行的不为人知的辩论、妥协、决策和行动的内幕，让人大饱眼福。
——经济学家、复旦大学中国经济研究中心主任 张军
真实，生动，紧张，刺激。在世纪金融危机的高压下，位于权力中心的重量级玩家，权衡的是上级发出的指令、下级通报的形势、媒体转达的民情、以及自身的经验和直觉，市场信念和数学模型则无足轻重。
——北京大学法与经济学研究中心研究员 薛兆丰
保尔森先生在这本书中坦率地承认，一系列的救市措施并不是真正来自于详细的分析，而是来自对危机的恐惧。
——《华尔街日报》
保尔森以第一人称的口吻直接陈述此次震惊寰宇的金融危机，毫无匿名之避讳、毫无无根无据的发难。尽管如此，这本书依旧是色彩纷呈并且细致入微。
——《华盛顿邮报》
Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury from 2006 until 2009 and former CEO of Goldman Sachs, provides an insider's account of the race to save the world's financial institutions from certain disaster.
Henry M. Paulson, Jr. served under President George W. Bush as the 74th Secretary of the Treasury from June 2006 until January 2009. Before coming to Treasury, Paulson was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs since the firm's initial public offering in 1999. He joined Goldman Sachs Chicago Office in 1974 and rose through the ranks holding several positions including, Managing Partner of the firm's Chicago office, Co-head of the firm's investment Banking Division, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Co-Senior partner.
Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Paulson was a member of the White House Domestic Council, serving as Staff Assistant to the President from 1972 to 1973, and as Staff Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon from 1970 to 1972.
Paulson graduated from Dartmouth in 1968, where he majored in English, was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and an All Ivy, All East football player. He received an M.B.A. from Harvard in 1970.
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