2008: The first responders' view

Firefighting is a brief account of that crucial moment by three of the most important actors

Firefighting: The Financial Crisis and Its Lessons

Ben S Bernanke, Timothy F Geithner and Henry M Paulson Jr

Penguin Books; $16; 230 pages

For a few months in 2008 and 2009 many people feared that the world economy was on the verge of collapse. They had good reason to be afraid. Financial markets were virtually frozen, with credit almost unavailable to anyone except the safest of borrowers. The real economy was in free fall: Over the winter America was losing 700,000 jobs a month, while world trade and industrial output were falling as fast as they did in the first year of the