Trillion Dollar Triage, Nick Timiraos
Trillion Dollar Triage, Nick Timiraos
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Trillion Dollar Triage
How Jay Powell and the Fed Battled a President and a Pandemic---and Prevented Economic Disaster

Author: Nick Timiraos

Narrator: Nick Timiraos, Peter Ganim

Unabridged: 12 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/01/2022


Synopsis

The inside story, told with “insight, perspective, and stellar reporting,” of how an unassuming civil servant created trillions of dollars from thin air, combatted a public health crisis, and saved the American economy from a second Great Depression (Alan S. Blinder, former Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve).

By February 2020, the U.S. economic expansion had become the longest on record. Unemployment was plumbing half-century lows. Stock markets soared to new highs. One month later, the public health battle against a deadly virus had pushed the economy into the equivalent of a medically induced coma. America’s workplaces—offices, shops, malls, and factories—shuttered. Many of the nation’s largest employers and tens of thousands of small businesses faced ruin. Over 22 million American jobs were lost. The extreme uncertainty led to some of the largest daily drops ever in the stock market.Nick Timiraos, the Wall Street Journal’s chief economics correspondent, draws on extensive interviews to detail the tense meetings, late night phone calls, and crucial video conferences behind the largest, swiftest U.S. economic policy response since World War II. Trillion Dollar Triage goes inside the Federal Reserve, one of the country’s most important and least understood institutions, to chronicle how its plainspoken chairman, Jay Powell, unleashed an unprecedented monetary barrage to keep the economy on life support. With the bleeding stemmed, the Fed faced a new challenge: How to nurture a recovery without unleashing an inflation-fueling, bubble-blowing money bomb?Trillion Dollar Triage is the definitive, gripping history of a creative and unprecedented battle to shield the American economy from the twin threats of a public health disaster and economic crisis. Economic theory and policy will never be the same.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Andi on June 02, 2022

A summary of the Fed and its major actions of the last few decades, leading up to a detailed blow-by-blow of the brief but steep 2020 recession and its fallout. This is, however, far from an exhaustive or unbiased academic view of those events. I thought this book was extremely informative and includ......more

Goodreads review by Jason on April 01, 2022

From my Washington Post book review: Nick Timiraos wrote the first draft of this remarkable history as the chief economics correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and now has followed up with “Trillion Dollar Triage: How Jay Powell and the Fed Battled a President and a Pandemic — and Prevented Econ......more

Goodreads review by Frank on August 31, 2022

This is doubtless the best overview and narrative we're going to get of Jay Powell's first term as chair of the Federal Reserve. From his unexpected appointment by Trump, to Trump's feuding with Powell over increasing rates in 2018 and '19, to the monumental and unprecedented steps the Fed took duri......more

Goodreads review by Ryan on April 14, 2022

The first of (what will inevitably be) many play-by-play narratives about the Covid economic policy response. Recommended. It's a good read that, like any good play-by-play, puts you back in the moment. He basically tracks events day by day, with each event accompanied by a dashboard of covid and sto......more

Goodreads review by Daniel on November 17, 2024

A day by day to week to week account of the beginning of 2020 and the unprecedented response by Fed led by Jerome Powell and collaboration with fiscal policy through treasury secretary Mnuchin. It’s fascinating to go back to this period and understand the mindset of the main actors during these even......more