Hank Paulson was the guy that gave away billions of hard earned tax payer dollars. 
Hank Paulson was the former CEO of Goldman Sachs when he was appointed in 2006 to become the nation’s next Secretary of the Treasury. 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, literally teetered at the edge of collapse. Panic ensnared international markets. And the credit crisis spread to all parts of the U.S. economy and grew more ominous with each passing day. All across America people lost jobs, the housing market collapsed and the financial security millions of families was in question.
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.
I don’t agree with Mr. Paulson. I never did. But even so I consider this book an invaluable source to understanding what went on when the US government decided to intervene and spend tax dollars on major financial institutions. Will Paulson go into history as the man who wasted a record amount of money or as the man who saved the country from a nightmare of a crisis?
