One of the best books on the global financial crisis, Crashed by Adam Tooze slays the idea that the policy response was about the technical ability of brave officials and not bare political choices. This point, augmented with stories of deep financial integration between China, Europe and the United States, is a devastatingly insightful description but not a prescription. Although Tooze says that the story is a perennial one of instability of capitalism, he neglects history and the relatively successful way the world responded in Bretton Woods, when unstable capitalism last engulfed us in crisis.
