I was getting married on the day the hammer fell on Wall Street. The date was 14 September 2008.

I had
been living in New York for almost a decade and had met my then fianc, Chris, in a downtown dive bar
called Eight Mile Creek. We were both city people but we wanted to have our wedding in a rural, rustic
setting. The place we finally chose was called Gedney Farm, nestled in the charming old Berkshire village
of New Marlborough, Massachusetts.

So, you want to get married in a horse barn? my father said when I showed him the venue, a
Normandy-style red barn surrounded by lush meadows and abundant orchards. Getting into the spirit of
things after that, he decided we should arrive at the venue in an old-fashioned horse and carriage. I
went along with his Cinderella fantasy and climbed into an open-topped white carriage, complete with a
driver and a footman, drawn by an old grey mare. The horse, on its last legs, was slow. It rained. I was
late.

Around eighty guests, our closest family and friends from all over the world, joined us for the occasion.
Lit by candles and strings of Edison bulbs, the ceremony was traditional and very beautiful. The best
mans speech was funny and the food was delicious, despite my finding a grasshopper about the size of
my little finger in the green salad.

So there I was, at the heart of one ancient institution marriage built on trust and life-long
commitment, while another Wall Street was imploding. Lost in the bubble of the celebrations, I 2
Introduction didnt realize the outside world was in meltdown until around 9.30 p.m., when I finally
noticed that, around the room, the warm glow of the Edison bulbs was competing with the brash blue
glare of iPhones and BlackBerries as guests stealthily consulted their hand-held harbingers of doom.
Family and friends who worked in banking were trying to absorb the barrage of messages flooding in.
Could the impossible have happened? Lehman Brothers had just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection. Bank of America and Barclays had pulled out of a deal that might have saved the 158-year-
0ld firm. Merrill Lynch had agreed to be bought by Bank of America for roughly $50 billion* in an
attempt to avert a financial crisis. Washington Mutual, Wachovia and HBOS in the United Kingdom were
within a whisker of collapsing. The fate of another giant, American International Group (AIG), the
vanguard of the credit default swap market, teetered in the balance.

A couple of friends who were senior executives at JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs apologized for
having to leave, summonsed to red alert emergency meetings. It would be a race against the clock to
avoid the blind panic that would surely happen when the markets opened. Several other guests drank
nervously and partied hard, not sure if they would be carrying their work belongings out in boxes the
following day. We danced the Horah, a traditional Jewish wedding ritual, which ended with me being
elevated on a chair and my husband being thrown precariously up in the air on a large white tablecloth.
Another moment of trust. Guests whirled around us, clapped and made Oy! Oy! Oy! noises.
Meanwhile, outside the barn, the biggest global financial crisis in history was building up a head of
steam.

It was, of course, the beginning of the nerve-shattering period when many businesses fell off a cliff and
the worlds financial system came closer to collapse than at any time since the Great Depression. As we
now know, the economic repercussions of the meltdown would engulf the world for many years to
come. But my wedding day, rich with tradition, also marked the downfall of something more profound:
public trust in institutions.