Too Big to Fail - Andrew Ross Sorkin [164]
They settled on setting up a meeting at 6:00 p.m. at the New York Fed. Geithner’s office wouldn’t start calling all the CEOs until just past 4:00 p.m., after the market had closed. The last thing they could afford was for news of the meeting to leak.
Paulson, who usually made the trip to New York on US Airways, which offered a government discount—Wendy had always given him grief about flying in a private jet—arranged to charter a plane to New York, using his NetJets accounts. He couldn’t afford to be delayed; the matter at hand was too important, and the weather was atrocious. If anything, he was worried the plane wouldn’t even be able to take off.
As they sped toward Dulles to catch the flight, Paulson, almost inaudibly, said, “God help us.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lloyd Blankfein was milling about the greenroom at the Hilton Hotel on Fifty-third Street at Sixth Avenue, waiting to make a speech at the Service Nation Summit, an annual conference coordinated by a coalition of nonprofits that promotes volunteerism in America. Dressed in his customary blue suit and pressed white shirt and blue tie, he had come to give one of the keynote addresses—following Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and preceding Hillary Clinton—to discuss Goldman’s 10,000 Women nonprofit program, which fostered business and management education for women in developing and emerging economies.
Clinton, who had been at the other side of the greenroom returning phone calls, now strolled over to him and politely asked if she might speak before him; she had to get to a dinner, she explained. Blankfein was a big fan; he had given her some $4,600 in donations and had endorsed her in the Democratic primaries over Barack Obama. Since he had no pressing business himself, Blankfein gladly agreed to the switch.
Two minutes later, however, Blankfein’s cell phone rang. “We got a call from the Fed. There’s a meeting at six p.m. for all the bank CEOs,” his assistant told him, sounding simultaneously excited and nervous. “Paulson, Geithner, and Cox are supposed to be there.”
This was it, Blankfein thought. The big one. Paulson was going to have “the families” meet to try to save Lehman.
Blankfein looked at his watch. It was already getting close to 5:00 p.m., Schwarzenegger was still chattering away, and he had just given his spot away to Clinton.
He tried to reach Gary Cohn, Goldman’s co-president, to find out what was going on but didn’t get an answer—Cohn was likely still on the shuttle back from D.C. after testifying at a hearing for the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
Blankfein sheepishly walked over to Clinton. “Remember I told you that you could go ahead of me?” he asked. “Well, I have an emergency. I just got a call that I have to go to the Fed.”
Clinton looked at him as if she didn’t understand what he was saying.
Embarrassed, he tried to explain: “They usually don’t call me up when it’s something really pleasant, since they’ve done this a total of never.”
She half-smiled sympathetically and let him speak first.
Jamie Dimon could hardly believe his bad luck. He was supposed to be home by 7:00 p.m. to have dinner with his daughter Julia’s boyfriend’s parents, whom he and his wife were meeting for the first time. Julia, his eldest daughter, had been begging her father all week to be on his best behavior and to make a good impression. And now the Fed was calling an all-hands-on-deck meeting of Wall Street’s top brass.
Dimon called his wife, Judy, who was well accustomed to receiving calls like this from her husband. “Geithner’s called us down to the Fed,” Dimon told her. “I don’t know how long it’ll go. I’ll try to get there as soon as I can.”
Dimon hung up the phone and hurried down the hallway to tell Steve Black the news. Black had just confirmed his plans to play in a tournament at the Golf Club of Purchase in Westchester, teeing off the next morning at 7:00.
“We’re going down to the Fed,” Dimon told him.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he replied.