Richard Toye
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @RichardToye
Cross-posted from the Guardian
Martin Wolf’s new volume on the causes and consequences of the world financial crisis comes with generous advance praise from, among others, Mervyn King, Larry Summers and Ben Bernanke. That, you might think, is a bit like a manual on maritime safety with jacket blurbs from the crew of the Titanic. But there is not much comfort for the these men within the book’s pages. Bernanke, in particular, gets it in the neck: “even two months before the crisis broke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve had next to no idea what was about to hit him, his institution and the global economy. To be blunt, he was almost clueless.” It seems he’s not too careful about reading the books he endorses, either.
That is a pity, because this is a work that repays close attention. Continue reading “What We’ve Learned From the Crash – Review of ‘The Shifts and the Shocks’, by Martin Wolf”
