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The Financial Crisis: Who is to Blame?

ISBN: 978-0-745-65164-4

July 2010

Polity

240 pages

Description

There is still no consensus on who or what caused the financial crisis which engulfed the world, beginning in the summer of 2007.

A huge number of suspects have been identified, from greedy investment bankers, through feckless borrowers, dilatory regulators and myopic central bankers to violent video games and high levels of testosterone among the denizens of trading floors. There is not even agreement on whether the crisis shows a need for more government intervention in markets, or less: some maintain that government encouragement of home ownership lay at the heart of the problem in the US, in particular.

In The Financial Crisis Howard Davies charts a course through these arguments, and the evidence advanced for each of them. The reader can thereby assess the weight to be attached to each, and the likely effectiveness of the remedies under development.

About the Author

Sir Howard John Davies is the current Chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland and the former Director of the London School of Economics. He also teaches courses on the regulation of financial markets and central banking at the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po.