Too Big to Bail: The "Paulson Put," Presidential Politics, and the Global Financial Meltdown

This paper analyzes how a world financial meltdown developed out of U.S. subprime mortgage markets. It outlines how deregulatory initiatives allowed Wall Street to build an entire line of new, risky financial products out of raw materials the mortgage markets supplied. We show how further bipartisan regulatory failures allowed these same firms to take on extreme amounts of leverage, which guaranteed that when a crisis hit, it would be severe. A principle focus is the "Paulson Put"—the effort by the U.S. Treasury secretary to stave off high-profile public financial bailouts until after the 2008 presidential election. The paper shows how the Federal Home Loan Bank System and other government agencies were successfully pressed into service for this purpose—for a while.