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Crashed

How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World

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Crashed

By: Adam Tooze
Narrated by: Simon Vance, Adam Tooze
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Buy for $29.25

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WINNER OF THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018
ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR
A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOK

"An intelligent explanation of the mechanisms that produced the crisis and the response to it...One of the great strengths of Tooze's book is to demonstrate the deeply intertwined nature of the European and American financial systems."--The New York Times Book Review

From the prizewinning economic historian and author of Shutdown and The Deluge, an eye-opening reinterpretation of the 2008 economic crisis (and its ten-year aftermath) as a global event that directly led to the shockwaves being felt around the world today.

We live in a world where dramatic shifts in the domestic and global economy command the headlines, from rollbacks in US banking regulations to tariffs that may ignite international trade wars. But current events have deep roots, and the key to navigating today’s roiling policies lies in the events that started it all—the 2008 economic crisis and its aftermath. Despite initial attempts to downplay the crisis as a local incident, what happened on Wall Street beginning in 2008 was, in fact, a dramatic caesura of global significance that spiraled around the world, from the financial markets of the UK and Europe to the factories and dockyards of Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, forcing a rearrangement of global governance. With a historian’s eye for detail, connection, and consequence, Adam Tooze brings the story right up to today’s negotiations, actions, and threats—a much-needed perspective on a global catastrophe and its long-term consequences. Global Financial Crisis Politics & Government Economic History US Economy Political Science Banking Economic Policy Capitalism Economics Government Business Thought-Provoking Deflation Wall Street Great Recession China Deficit United Kingdom Economic Inequality Taxation Export Business Development & Entrepreneurship Russia Socialism Latin America Tariff Middle East Economic disparity Imperialism War
Comprehensive Analysis • Historical Perspective • Clear Voice • Global Economic Insights • Detailed Explanations

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This is really good. I knew quite a bit about the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent Eurozone crisis, but I still learned a lot. The advantage of this book is that it places the crises in the context of long term economic trends, which makes them less a matter of vice or stupidity (as portrayed in the Big Short) and more the natural outcome of people grappling with hard problems and iterating on solutions.

Excellent

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Capitalism is understood by the author to be the centrally-planned-by-monetarists economy that we have now, portraying past asset-inflating, socio-economic-divide-widening central bankers as heroes. A sharp deflation instead (what would have resulted in true free market capitalism) would have solved much of the political economy and international relations issues identified by the author. Pain postponed is pain multiplied in this instance, it’s only a matter of time.

Great history but misunderstands capitalism

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Tooze's introduction really sets the stage for this book - a decade on, it is still difficult to fully understand exactly what happened, why, and what it all means. This book is a very solid analysis of the interlinking of bank balance sheets across geographical boarders and the interrelationship (and common cause) of the US and EU financial crises of around 2008-2010. The ending is a little weak in the sense that it leaves the reader unsure of what comes next, although this is honest. More time could have been spent on assessing the capacity of macroprudentialism to avert these kinds of crises. Ultimately, there is a layer of this analysis that is inescapably Austrian - the crisis set in place a number of disaster scenarios that sought to avoid doom loops (sometimes failing and sometimes succeeding) but could really only have been effectively managed via prevention, which would have at some level involved the situation that allowed EU demand for USD to drive unsound lending practices in the US housing market. In that sense, the timing for this book is really good, in that, even with all the issues with hard Austrian thinking, the biggest problem with Austrianism is that no one is willing to be Mises during a boom. Which, given the fact that the boom of last year in the US market is so patently artificially ginned up by governmental intervention, seems again, very appropriate right now. The other thing that I think is lacking is an analysis not just of debt-to-GDP (both in the national debt sense and in the total public and private debt sense) but also debt-to-assets and how it plays a role in all of this. Piketty and others show that national debt-to-assets is close to zero for most developed nations, but while the US remains very indebted, it also has a very large stock of private assets (so that our stock remains many years of GDP, 7+ I think). Overall, this is a book everyone should listen to, and along with other titles that explain the rise of the modern money system and modern international finance, it's important for us all to understand at least some of how all this works and not leave it in the hands purely of either bureaucrats nor economists, and certainly not in the hands of politicians.

I liked Tooze's voice but the narrator (who sounds kind of like Rumple in Once) is very good. The narration quality is professional and it is well produced to be listened to in a car during a commute or other noisier environments.

Detailed, thoughtful, and thought provoking

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This is the best period I’ve never had something so clearly lay out every issue thank you

Best book about finance and world politics I’ve ever listened to

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Superior discussion of the 2007-08 financial crisis and the following global and regional financial and political crises that followed in its wake.

Superior

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