What failed in 2008?

Berkeley

TO SOLVE a problem, it is not enough to know what to do. You actually have to implement the solution - and be willing to change course if it turns out that you did not know quite as much as you thought. That is the message of two recent books that, together, tell you everything you need to know about the 2008 financial crisis: what caused it, what can be done to prevent it from recurring, and why those things have yet to be done.

The first book is The Shifts and the Shocks, by the conservative British journalist, Martin Wolf, who begins by cataloguing the major shifts that set the stage for the economic disaster that continues to shape the world today. His starting point is the huge rise in wealth among the world's richest 0.1 per cent and 0.01 per cent and the consequent pressure for people, governments, and companies to take on increasingly unsustainable levels of debt.