Too Big to Fail Page #8

There's a run on your bank.

You need money. Citi has deposits.

Citi's a mess, you're

organized. Call Pandit.

Yeah.

I want you to look at merging

with Morgan Stanley.

What, are you kidding me?

I just bought Bear.

We're still trying to make that work.

You didn't buy Bear.

You got Bear as a Christmas present.

The market's a f***ing disaster, Jamie.

Talk to John Mack.

Hey, Geithner says

we should talk about a merger.

- You wanna do a deal?

- No.

Then why the f*** did

he tell me to call you?

I'm under orders to try and help you.

You're a prince, Jamie. A real prince.

Apparently, some people seem to think

combining our firms would be a good idea.

I want you to know I'm

flattered by this call.

Vikram, I'm not trying to flatter you,

believe me.

Geithner's calling.

Here comes goddamn eHarmony.

Hey, guess what. Jamie's not interested.

Do Wachovia.

They were writing mortgages

with their eyes closed.

Tim, it's a sh*t sandwich. Forget it.

I haven't been able

to reach you for four hours.

That is totally f***ing unacceptable

on a day like today.

I had to run my team

through the Goldman proposal.

It's not gonna work.

You passed on Goldman

without even talking to me?

I don't need another trillion dollars

on my balance sheet.

Next time I call, pick up.

F***er.

The problem is the toxic assets.

Let's just buy them.

We'll call it Cash for Trash.

When the market stabilizes,

we'll unload them.

Hopefully, Treasury will get its money back.

- Is that in the Break the Glass plan?

- Basically.

My copy's missing some pages.

Could someone else show me the rest of...

It's succinct.

We've got one shot with Congress.

You want them to write a piece

of legislation based on three pages?

Look, guys,

buying toxic assets is gonna be a nightmare.

Nobody knows what the stuff's worth.

It'll take forever to untangle.

These banks are going down now.

So what do we do?

You wanna unfreeze credit, right?

You want the banks to lend people money?

- That's the goal.

- So give them money to lend.

Capital injections?

Dan, come on.

I can't believe you're

pulling out the "N" word.

I'm not saying nationalize the banks.

I'm saying isolate the ones that are

really in trouble and make an investment.

- It's un-American.

- It's sure un-Republican.

You'd make the government a stockholder.

What, do we tell them how to manage

themselves, what to buy and sell?

Run them like the post office?

'Cause that works like a dream.

We make it temporary.

We make ourselves non-voting stockholders.

You can't just hand the banks

massive piles of cash.

Nobody's gonna go for it.

To the Republicans it's nationalization.

To the Democrats it's a bailout.

And the banks are gonna go ballistic.

Sorry, Dan, not gonna happen.

Kudos for out-of-the-box thinking.

Neel, if we go with your plan

to buy the assets,

how much is it gonna cost?

It won't work.

Look, the plan is three pages long,

totally vague.

If buying the assets doesn't work,

we'll nationalize the banks for you, okay?

- How much?

- To be safe, maybe a trillion.

The Congress will never

do a trillion, never.

There's $11 trillion in

residential mortgages.

There's three trillion in commercial

mortgages. That's 14 trillion, right?

You gotta figure about 5% default rate.

5% of 14 trillion is

$700 billion.

It's better than a trillion.

The only way to get this done

is to just scare them shitless.

That should be easy.

I'm scared shitless myself.

Troubled Asset Relief Program?

TARP, we're calling it.

This is your draft of the bill?

Subject to revision, certainly.

I've only got three pages here.

Am I missing something?

No.

You're just looking

for a big blank check in a hurry.

It's all for the banks.

You don't want a penny

for the average Joe

that's about to lose his house?

There's not a scrap of oversight

built into this,

not for the banks or

for you, for that matter.

You want us to simply hand over

$700 billion and trust you?

How is it possible you

didn't see this coming?

If you wanna rewind the

tape, we can do that.

But right now, the one thing

we don't have is time.

We need an announcement tonight

to calm the market.

We need legislation next week.

I spent my entire academic career

studying the Great Depression.

The Depression may have started

because of a stock market crash,

but what hit the general economy

was a disruption of credit,

average citizens unable to borrow money

to do anything, to buy a home,

start a business, stock their shelves.

Credit has the ability

to build a modern economy,

but lack of credit has the power to

destroy it, swiftly and absolutely.

If we do not act boldly and immediately,

we will replay the Depression of the 1930s,

only this time it will be far, far worse.

We don't do this now,

we won't have an economy on Monday.

Geithner.

We took the proposal down to Congress.

Are they gonna go for it?

They didn't like the fact that it was short.

I thought concise was a plus.

They thought it was flimsy

or arrogant or something.

I don't know what they think.

They couldn't get past it.

The market's in a death spiral.

They're gonna sink the bill

because the proposal is too f***ing short?

They're working on it.

They're gonna make it longer,

among other things.

Look, just tell me you got something.

No. No, we're nowhere.

Who's left for Morgan Stanley?

China Investment Corporation.

Maybe Mitsubishi.

No, the Japanese will never do this deal.

How about Goldman?

Goldman's looking at Wachovia,

but they're so f***ed,

even John Mack turned up his nose.

You gotta get that bill passed.

- I'm pushing.

- Push harder. Please.

This isn't working, Hank.

Hank?

Could you excuse me a moment?

Oh, my God. Gao, Gao.

I am so sorry about this.

There's nothing we can do.

It's New York, you know. We're lucky

we can still buy a beer at Yankee Stadium.

Don't worry about it. I should quit anyway.

When you're ready, we'll be inside.

Is there any movement there?

They made an extremely low opening offer.

I pretended I didn't hear it.

The markets can't open Monday

without a resolution of Morgan Stanley.

We really need you to do a deal.

- You need to call Jamie.

- I called Jamie.

He doesn't want us.

There's too much overlap.

We've spoken to him. He'll do it.

For what, a dollar? Why would I do that?

I got China Investment

and Mitsubishi kicking my tires.

I know those guys.

They're not gonna close a deal in time.

We want you to call Jamie.

Let me ask you a question.

35,000 jobs just disappeared in this city

between AIG, Lehman and Bear.

We make a deal with Jamie,

he'll fire 20,000 Morgan Stanley employees.

You think that's good public policy?

John, we are looking

at the whole system here.

The Chinese are leaving.

Gao found out

we're also talking to Mitsubishi.

I gotta go.

All right, get me Kuroyanagi

and a Japanese translator.

We're closing with Mitsubishi tonight.

Tim Geithner's calling again.

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