History has thrown a handful of men together this week with a task that they themselves might have brushed off as unthinkable just days ago: Give the U.S. financial system its biggest makeover since the 1930s. And do it quickly.
They hail from all parts of the financial world, a banker from North Carolina, a London financial executive, the U.S. Treasury chieftain who himself once ruled a Wall Street powerhouse. Along with small cadre of other men, they are struggling to shore up the foundations of Wall Street, on the fly.
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It's too early to know whether the choices they've made -- rapid-fire acquisitions of Wall Street icons Merrill Lynch & Co. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., government seizure of one of the world's biggest insurers, American International Group Inc. -- were the right ones. Rarely are decisions on the trillion-dollar scale made so hastily and with so little vetting.
Now, the government appears ready to embark on yet another attempt to stem the financial carnage. The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve are considering ways to take bad assets off the balance sheets of financial institutions, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Here is a look at how this group was thrown together and the influences that have shaped their decisions to date. The account is based on interviews with numerous primary players, as well as individuals who witnessed the action.