Political memoirs are often designed to inflate the importanceof the author.

Usually the gist of these books is something along the lines of“I saved the day,” or “if they had only listened to me, thingswould have been better.”

In the case of former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.,some of the self-generated pats on the back are deserved. He tookoffice in 2006 (leaving his post as chairman/CEO of Goldman Sachs)at a time when the economy was in reasonably good shape but alsoshowed signs of trouble. Things quickly began to collapse andPaulson et al performed the economic equivalent of emergencysurgery.

His new memoir, On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop theCollapse of the Global Financial System, takes readers behindthe scenes in the trenches during the efforts to avoid anotherGreat Depression.

Though an adamant free marketer and lifelong Republican, Paulsonproved to be a pragmatist who helped engineer unprecedentedprograms of government intervention in the workings of themarketplace.

Among the earliest signs of difficulty were at mortgage buyersFannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which he noted were an “extremeexamples of a broader problem that was soon to become all tooevident-very big financial institutions with too much leverage andlax regulation.”

Paulson describes the meetings in which he and other governmentofficials fired the CEOs of the Fannie and Freddie and placed theGSEs into conservatorship: “Fannie even tried to make it seem thattheir plight was our fault, that our having gotten the bazooka hadcaused everyone to lose confidence in them.”

He gives readers front row seats inside negotiations withmembers of Congress (and has generally nicer things to say aboutDemocrats than Republicans) about the creation of the TroubledAssets Relief Program and other controversial measures aimed atstopping the economic bleeding.

At one point he went down on his knees in front of House SpeakerNancy Pelosi and implored her, “Don't blow this up.”

That incident followed the White House meeting during thepresidential campaign where John McCain and Barack Obama weighed inon the crisis, and McCain tried to grandstand. Paulson was, to putit charitably, underwhelmed by McCain's behavior and aghast at hislack of knowledge about economics, though he was even lessimpressed by Sarah Palin.

Paulson had mixed feelings about others, such as FDIC ChairmanSheila Bair. While he “admired her energy and her efforts to dealwith problem mortgages” he disagreed with her efforts to pressurethe Treasury Department to use TARP funds for mortgage relief. Hefelt that the idea was problematic because if a loan went bad, thegovernment would have to write a check to the bank, not thehomeowner.

His book also provides a tutorial on some of the intricacies ofthe rules regarding the limits of government intervention in themarkets.

For example, during the ultimately unsuccessful effort to savethe investing banking giant Lehman Brothers, Paulson and FederalReserve Chairman Ben Bernanke were urged to have the government usefederal funds. Paulson explains the rationale for theiractions.

“The Fed had no authority to guarantee an investment bank'strading book or for that matter any of its liabilities. And withoutan acquirer with a big balance sheet to ensure solvency, a Fedliquidity loan would not have been sufficient to hold Lehmantogether during a shareholder vote.”

Paulson occasionally faults himself for being overly short withpeople and criticizes himself for not realizing early enough thepotential threats to the economy from the collapse of the housingbubble. But for the most part, there's not a great deal ofself-reflection in this book.

Despite those shortcomings, On the Brink, is anengaging and informative account of a difficult period in Americaneconomic history.

One of the reasons for the recent economic crisis was that somepeople weren't knowledgeable about how to manage personalfinances.

Credit unions have long been at the forefront of improvingfinancial literacy and a great example of one of those efforts isWestie's Triple Decker Decision: A Westie Adventure FromNorthwest Federal Credit Union.

Joelle Hahn, a marketing specialist at Northwest Federal CreditUnion, has written a short work that discusses the importance ofsaving money by telling the story of a dog who has to decidewhether to use his allowance to buy things or to save money.

It's a fun book and the advice to consider whether to spendmoney for yourself, for gifts or to save is a valuable lesson forchildren and adults alike.

“I am proud of you, Westie. You've considered today, you'veconsidered others and considered the future,” Westie's mother saidto him.

The book also contains a page of advice for parents on how totalk to their children about financial literacy and informationabout some of the credit union's youth accounts.

It's an innovative approach to a serious topic.

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