Frequent prayer, interludes of bird-watching and a timely outbreak of dry heaves helped Henry Paulson save the American financial system from collapse, in spite of a stark lack of co-operation from Britain, according to a newly published memoir from President Bush's treasury secretary.
Written as a staunch defence of his handling of Lehman's failure, Bear Stearns' collapse, AIG's rescue and other events in the epochal financial crisis, Paulson's book, "On the Brink", contains a handful of colourful insights into drastic efforts to stem economic bleeding at the height of the credit crunch in 2008.
Grappling with exhaustion amid the imminent collapse of the insurer AIG, Paulson recalls a soul-searching choice between God and sleeping pills in a Washington hotel room after one particularly difficult day: "I stood under the harsh bathroom lights , staring at the small pill in the palm of my hand. Then I flushed it - and the contents of the entire bottle - down the toilet. I longed for a good night's rest. For that, I decided, I would rely on prayer, placing my trust in a Higher Power."
Paulson clearly shared every bit of his boss, George Bush's, faith in religion. On another occasion, Paulson stepped out of a crisis meeting with a jolt of fear rising up inside him and called his wife, Wendy, worrying that everyone was looking to him for answers which he didn't have.
"'You needn't be afraid,' Wendy said. 'Your job is to reflect God, Infinite Mind, and you can rely on Him.'" She went on to quote from the second book of Timothy ("for God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind") as reassurance.
Discussing efforts to save the 158-year-old Wall Street bank Lehman Brothers, Paulson repeats an allegation he's made a few times before - that the British government "screwed" Lehman Brothers by blocking Barclays from rescuing the ailing investment bank prior to its bankruptcy for fear of importing Wall Street financial cancer into the UK.
Describing Alistair Darling as "a straight shooter" with whom he had "a good working relationship", Paulson relates being stunned by a phone call in which the chancellor told him that Barclay's buyout was a no-go: "The chancellor of the exchequer was delivering a clear message: we would get no help from the British. Our last hope for Lehman was gone. I hung up feeling deflated, and frustrated that we had wasted so much time with Barclays."
Paulson recalls passing on the news to a waiting gaggle of banking executives by blurting out that "The British screwed us". Barclays later bought large chunks of Lehman from receivers, but not before the firm's collapse had wreaked havoc in financial markets around the globe.
A 6ft2 former American football prodigy nicknamed "the hammer", Paulson looks anything but vulnerable. But he admits that the sheer scale of the crisis took a physical toll. He describes how dramatic symptoms of his own fatigue helped to energise members of Congress to approve his $700bn banking bail-out package.
As contentious talks stretched into the night on Capitol Hill, Paulson writes: "Exhausted, I went back to the small office I was using and had a bout of the dry heaves in front of [Republican senator] Judd Gregg. I wasn't that sick, but I made a lot of noise, which seemed to galvanise [Democrat] Rahm Emanuel."
On another personal note, Paulson took an instant dislike to Sarah Palin, complaining that the former vice-presidential candidate was over-familiar in their very first phone conversation: "Right away she started calling me Hank. Now, everyone calls me Hank. My assistant calls me Hank. Everyone on my staff, from top to bottom, calls me Hank. It's what I like. But for some reason, the way she said it over the phone like that, even though we'd never met, rubbed me the wrong way."
During infrequent interludes of downtime, Paulson tried to relax by going bird-watching - while travelling on government business, he sometimes found a few hours at foreign summits to go off in seek of a glimpse of the local avian species.
But even birds weren't enough to take his mind off work during the week of Bear Stearns' collapse. Paulson writes that he and his wife took an evening off to go and see "The Lord God Bird", a documentary about the ivory-billed woodpecker, at the National Geographic Society. As he struggled to make small talk with environmental movie enthusiasts, Paulson was scolded by his wife for discourtesy.
"I understand that you're under pressure," said Mrs Paulson. "But there's no excuse for not being courteous to people."
Paulson apologised, explaining: "I'm worried about the world falling apart."
