Crashed

I recently read "Crashed" a recent (2018) book by Adam Tooze about the great financial crisis (GFC) of 2008-2009 and its aftermath.  I had previously read Tooze's book "The Wages of Destruction" about the economy of Nazi Germany and found it interesting so when I saw this book on the new books shelf at my local library I thought it might be worth checking out.  This was a mistake.

The book is very long (over 700 pages including nearly 100 pages of index and notes) but displays little insight.  There is a old saying about not being able to see the forest for the trees which seems to apply.  We are now at some remove from the GFC and so (one would hope) are better placed to identify its important features and effects.  But this book doesn't really attempt to do this. Instead it largely consists of a chronological recounting of events with little real analysis. The failure to develop any sort of convincing theoretical framework means the book is of little help in understanding and evaluating policy alternatives going forward.

For example the book states in several places that the American response to the crisis (although flawed) was more effective than the European response.  However the book doesn't consider the obvious possibility that the American response just appeared more effective because the problems in America weren't as serious as in Europe.    

Again the book seems to vaguely disapprove of the way Europe dealt with Greece but with little consideration of concrete alternatives and their advantages and disadvantages.  When the Euro was introduced many American economists thought it was a mistake because the area involved was too diverse to be adequately served by a single uniform monetary policy.  The book does not really discuss this.

One general view of the GFC is that people want to save more money than the system can safely accommodate.  That is there are more people who want to lend money than credit worthy borrowers.  In such a situation there is a great temptation to pretend certain loans are safe when they are not.  If this imbalance is real than specific regulations aimed at preventing certain types of bad loans are likely to just cause the problem to reappear in different forms.  But this sort of bigger picture view is lacking in this book making it of little value in my view.

To sum up I didn't like this book at all.  It just recapitulates events at length without adding much in the way of understanding.  I would avoid it.