A story being published in the New Yorker has revealed that there is a softer weedier side to some of the tough guys of Wall Street. The article entitle “Eight Days” documents the events of September 12 to September 19 2008 in which the world financial system was on the brink of collapse.

Here are a couple of our favorite extracts:

Two days after the failure of Lehman Brothers (via nymag).

Geithner said, It’s hard to describe how bad it was and how bad it felt. He got a call from a “titan of the financial system” who said he was worried but he was doing fine. His voice was quavering. After hanging up, Geithner immediately called the man back. ‘Don’t call anyone else,’ Geithner said. “If anyone hears your voice, you’ll scare the shit out of them.”

And Lloyd Blankfein goes for a historically flavoured put-down to another Master of the Universe (via Dealbreaker):

At 11AM, for the fourth consecutive day, investment bankers filed into the New York Fed. “I don’t think I can take another day of this, a Goldman banker told Lloyd Blankfein as they got out of the Goldman car.”You’re getting out of a Mercedes to go to the New York Federal Reserve,” Blankfein responded. “You’re not getting out of a Higgins boat on Omaha Beach.”

Nicely done. They better have Bruce Willis on hand for the screenplay.