2008 Financial Crisis

The room is a mix that shouldn't have to exist: the officials responsible for the entire financial system's survival, sitting across the table from the bank CEOs whose decisions helped bring it to the brink. It is the weekend of September 12, 2008, and Wall Street's biggest players have been summoned to the New York Fed to decide Lehman Brothers' fate before markets open Monday. No solution has been found yet. Merrill Lynch is quietly shopping itself around in a panic, AIG's balance sheet is unraveling behind the scenes, and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke are running out of options and time. Delegates will represent both sides of an uneasy alliance: government officials trying to prevent total systemic collapse while managing public outrage over bailouts, and bank executives fighting to protect their own institutions, shareholders, and each other's weaknesses. This is a full crisis committee, with a front room for the official negotiations and emergency measures, and a back room for the private calls, leaked information, and self-interested maneuvering that actually decided who survived the crisis and who didn't.