Author:Alex Brummer
On 9 August 2007 France's largest bank announced that it had had to suspend trading in two huge investment funds it controlled. The same day three German banks revealed that they were close to collapse. A few days later came the first run on a British bank since the 1860s as vast queues of worried investors besieged Northern Rock. Within weeks, the Government were being forced to bail out this previously little-known bank to the tune of £30 billion, share prices in other mortgage lenders were plummeting, and alarming news about the state of several of the biggest US banks was crossing the Atlantic. What lay behind this series of crippling disasters?
In The Crunch, award-winning journalist Alex Brummer painstakingly traces the course of the crisis from its origins in the US 'subprime' market to its explosion on to the international scene. It's a story of greed, mismanagement and dithering in which bankers seeking to make a quick buck, regulators engaged in turf wars and blame-avoidance, and governments paralysed by the sheer scale of the problem all conspired to bring the banking system almost to its knees. It's also a story of victims: the millions of people in the US who have already been thrown out of their houses, the entire population of the UK who have been co-opted to guarantee Northern Rock with £30 billion of public money, borrowers everywhere who are now finding credit more expensive and harder to get. And, as Alex Brummer convincingly argues, now that recession looms, this is only the beginning.
A compelling and clear narrative about the financial crisis and its implications.
—— City AMBrummer builds a racy transatlantic narrative out of the crisis ...
—— Guardian... he brings a journalist's relish to his task of revealing everything you wanted to know about the credit crunch but were too affraid to ask ... reads like a thriller - except that order is not restored on the final page.
—— ObserverThis is the roller-coaster version of events - and a surprisingly entertaining book about an otherwise dreary subject ... timely and interesting
—— New Statesman... a handy first draft of history.
—— BloombergTerrifying and superbly told
—— Daily TelegraphGenius
—— Sunday TimesCompelling and horrifying
—— GQA more than worthy successor to Liar's Poker ... if you want to know about the origins of the credit crunch, and the extraordinary cast of misfits, visionaries and chancers who made money from the crash, there's no more readable account
—— Daily TelegraphA triumph ... riveting ... a genuine page-turner
—— TimesThe very best book about this whole affair
—— John Lanchester, author of 'Whoops!'If you read only one book about the causes of the recent financial crisis, let it be Michael Lewis's The Big Short
—— Washington PostIn the hands of Michael Lewis, anything is possible ... if you want to know how a nation lost its financial mind - and have a good laugh finding out - this is the book to read.
—— The Sunday TimesMagnificent ... a perfect storm of brilliant writer meeting big subject.
—— The GuardianA great book for anyone interested in inspiring and managing creative talent (Books of the Year)
—— Financial Times , Lionel Barber, Editor of the Financial TimesIn this riveting, well-written expose, Shaxson goes deep into the largely unexamined realm of offshore money. In the process, he reveals that this shadow world is no mere sideshow, but is troublingly central to modern finance, with the US and the UK as leaders. The resulting abuses are widespread, ranging from tax revenue stripping from African nations to individuals and corporations escaping enforcement and accountability. A must read for anyone who wants to understand the hidden reasons why financial services firms have become so powerful and impossible to reform
—— Yves Smith, creator of Naked Capitalism and author of EconnedThey who sold us globalisation as a way of the whole world getting richer with fair rules, cheated us by letting the rich and powerful go "offshore". This gripping exposé should help end the scandal
—— Anthony Barnett, founder of openDemocracyPossibly the most important political book that I have read since The Spirit Level
—— Stuart Weir, co-founder of Charter 88, former editor of the New StatesmanHe has prised the lid off an important and terrifying can of worms
—— Martin Vander Weyer , Literary ReviewLively and well written book
—— Toby Young , Mail on SundayA welcome account of how the sun is never allowed to set on the British empire's old islands, whose fiscal pirates hoard the tax-free treasures of the rich
—— Geoffrey Robertson , New Statesman, Books of the YearShaxson delves into capitalism's secret nooks and tells us about how a culture of secrecy can perpetuate itself. Very interesting
—— William Leith , Evening StandardA compelling read [...] an important and very much a live topic, it'll take you a few hours to read the book but it will be a worthwhile investment of time
—— Peter Magee , BookbagWhat makes this such a good read for the layman is that the author employs all his journalistic skill (he used to work at Reuters) to illustrate his arguments and uses real examples to real examples to illustrate complex issues
—— John Arlidge , Sunday TimesThis book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the world we live in
—— Brian Maye , Irish TimesThis engrossing book about the offshore banking racket, with its eye-opening scrutiny of tax havens and the suited scoundrels who profit from them, will make you think again about the murkier side of the City...This first-rate forensic work ends with a plea that the closed City "must be abolished and submerged into a...fully democratic London"
—— Boyd Tonkin , Independent[An] informed polemic against finance capital
—— Oliver Kamm , The TimesNow more than a decade old, this is still the best introduction to the world of tax havens
—— Economist, *Summer Reads of 2022*