of 1993, basically, that was the end of bob reuben in my book.o, you know, because i had to keep going on my narrative focus which was who was left behind at goldman and what they did -- how they had to sort of clean up the mess that bob reuben had left behind. and that became the story of what happened in '93 and '94 at the firm when they almost went out of business. so i try to tell a few vignettes about what got people like bob reuben or john whitehead or steve friedman or hank paulson interested in politics. i tell a great story about how steve friedman who was bob reuben's co-senior partner at goldman sachs and then was left alone by reuben when reuben went to washington and then, you know, eight years later ironically steve reuben got offered -- i mean, steve friedman got offered the same job in the white house that bob reuben had had at the national economic council. and bush calls him up and insists he come do this job, and he tells bush, look, i've got a heart i rivet my ya, i don't know that i can do this. that kind of pressure is not g

you mentioned bob reuben and hank paulson, two recent ones.here's many others i describe in the book. even this financial crisis we've just come through, goldman was able to see trouble coming unlike every other firm on wall street and do something about it. they made a big bet against the mortgage market that paid off in terms of billions of dollars for goldman that every other firm did not see and just pretended didn't exist and, basically, all went down the tubes. but i think what you do get out of this story is how often goldman found itself in trouble and how skilled it was at getting out of trouble. and so that was probably, you know, don't forget wall street has always been a dangerous place. firms have been going in and out of business their whole, you know, for the history of wall street. most firms don't make it. and most firms before 1970 when they started going public and becoming public companies were small private partnerships that had limited amounts of capital that, you know, they got from their partners. and if something happe