Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises - Softcover

Geithner, Timothy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847941249 ISBN 13: 9781847941244

Publisher: Random House Business, 2015

Synopsis

From the former Treasury Secretary, the definitive account of the unprecedented effort to save the U.S. economy from collapse in the wake of the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression

On 26 January, 2009, during the depths of the financial crisis and having just completed five years as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Timothy F. Geithner was sworn in by President Barack Obama as the seventy-fifth Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. Now, in a strikingly candid, riveting, and historically illuminating memoir, Geithner takes readers behind the scenes during the darkest moments of the crisis. Swift, decisive, and creative action was required to avert a second Great Depression, but policy makers faced a fog of uncertainty, with no good options and the risk of catastrophic outcomes.

Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises takes us inside the room, explaining in accessible and forthright terms the hard choices and politically unpalatable decisions that Geithner and others in the Obama administration made during the crisis and recovery. He discusses the most controversial moments of his tenures at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and at the Treasury, including the harrowing weekend Lehman Brothers went bankrupt; the searing crucible of the AIG bonuses controversy; the development of his widely criticized but ultimately successful plan in early 2009 to end the crisis; the bracing fight for the most sweeping financial reforms in seventy years; and the lingering aftershocks of the crisis, including high unemployment, the fiscal battles, and Europe’s repeated flirtations with the economic abyss.

Geithner also shares his personal and professional recollections of key players such as President Obama, Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, and Larry Summers, among others, and examines the tensions between politics and policy that have come to dominate discussions of the U.S. economy. An insider’s account of how the Obama administration saved the economy but lost the American people, Stress Test reveals a side of Timothy Geithner that only few have seen.

About this title

Review:

"Sensational ... Tim's book will forever be the definitive work on what causes financial panics and what must be done to stem them when they occur." (Warren Buffett)

"Deals with issues far bigger than anything on the Man Booker long list." (Anne Ashworth The Times)

"Stress Test is an absolutely compelling account of the financial crisis, written in a clear, graceful style with striking honesty at every step along the way." (Doris Kearns Goodwin)

"This is a lucid, fascinating, and extremely important book ... Geithner does something unusual: he engages in substance. With both insight and humility, plus a good dose of wry humor, he explains what really happened during the financial crisis. No matter your political persuasion, you will find this book educational, enlightening, and interesting." (Walter Isaacson)

"A fascinating memoir about life in the maelstrom of the financial crisis ... Earlier books have described much of what happened that September, but Geithner was present for all the frantic meetings, the thousands of phone calls ― and in the case of Lehman, the failure to find a buyer that could keep it alive. New problems cropped up almost weekly, if not daily. He explains each in easy-to-understand language and what the issues were that shaped the responses... There could be another crisis someday, of course, but what Geithner and his colleagues did has made one far less likely." (USA Today)

Book Description:

From the former Treasury Secretary, the definitive account of the unprecedented effort to save the U.S. economy from collapse in the wake of the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Business
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1847941249
• ISBN 13: 9781847941244
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 592