Trillion Dollar Triage

How Jay Powell and the Fed Battled a President and a Pandemic---and Prevented Economic Disaster

By: Nick Timiraos

Narrated by: Nick Timiraos, Peter Ganim

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.

great history

great history of the Fed and events as they unfolded during the pandemic. we could have done without the voice Inflection every time Trumps name came up.

Good Account

I enjoyed this book. The author is right basically saying the Federal Reserve did most of the work in this crisis. The understaffing of Treasury between 2017-2020 was a mistake. The Treasury’s reason for understaffing or “light staff” as they put it, was to save money but it didn’t save any real money and just increased the risk for Treasury.

Interesting insight on challenging times

This book brought back many memories of a challenging time in the world with the COVID pandemic. A fascinating read if you like to follow markets to understand the massive efforts required to protect our economy from melt down. With hindsight in 2023, I am happy the US Fed and Congress took such aggressive action. Extremely complex maze of actions were well described.

Entrancing

The book stands as a worthy companion to the accounts provided by survivors of the 2008-09 crisis including Paulson, Bernanke, and Geithner but as told by a third-party in accordance with the standards of a professional journalist.

good learning about central bank

good learning material about central bank with evolving polices and tools. detailed account of what happened at the extraordinary time, with heroic actions and selfless servitude of the fed and treasury. my respect to people at federal reserve.