Excerpted from Bull by the Horns: Fighting to Save Main Street From Wall Street and Wall Street From Itself, by Sheila Bair. To be published September 25, 2012, by Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Fortune-

I took a deep breath and walked into the large conference room at the Treasury Department. I was apprehensive and exhausted, having spent the entire weekend in marathon meetings with Treasury and the Fed. I felt myself start to tremble, and I hugged my thick briefing binder tightly to my chest in an effort to camouflage my nervousness. Nine men stood milling around in the room, peremptorily summoned there by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Collectively, they headed financial institutions representing about $9 trillion in assets, or 70% of the U.S. financial system. I would be damned if I would let them see me shaking. I nodded briefly in their direction and started to make my way to the opposite side of the large polished-mahogany table, where I and the rest of the government’s representatives would take our seats, facing off against the nine financial executives once the meeting began. My effort to slide around the group and escape the need for hand shaking and chitchat was foiled as Wells Fargo (WFC) chairman Richard Kovacevich quickly moved toward me. He was eager to give me an update on his bank’s acquisition of Wachovia, which, as chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), I had helped facilitate. He said it was going well. I told him I was glad. Kovacevich could be rude and abrupt, but he and his bank were very good at managing their business and executing on deals. I had no doubt that their acquisition of Wachovia would be completed smoothly and without disruption in banking services to Wachovia’s customers, including the millions of depositors the FDIC insured.

[FORTUNE]