In this gripping and brilliantly reported book, acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind tells for the first time the full story of America's financial meltdown and an untested new president charged with commanding Washington, taming Wall Street, rescuing an economy on the verge of collapse, and restoring the confidence of a shaken nation. Suskind moves from the frenzied trading floors of lower Manhattan to the power corridors inside the Beltway and introduces a larger than life cast of politicians and advisors, titans of high finance, reformers, lobbyists, and others who faced a crisis unlike anything they had ever imagined. Based on hundreds of hours of interviews and exhaustive research, filled with piercing insight and startling disclosures, Confidence Men goes beyond the headlines and previous accounts, bringing into focus the unprecedented struggle between the nation's two capitals - New York and Washington, one of private gain, the other of public purpose - that continues to divide and r