The Financial Crisis

`Davies offers the most comprehensive post-mortem yet of the Great Crisis - essential reading for those who are trying to fix a still precarious post-crisis world.' Stephen S. Roach, Chairman, Morgan Stanley Asia

`It's hard to think of anyone better qualified than Howard Davies to evaluate the competing arguments about what caused the worst financial crisis and recession since the 1930s.' Robert Peston, BBC Business Editor

`Howard Davies' lucid and panoramic account of the financial crisis and the reasons for it is crisply and entertainingly written. It is a great primer for anyone hoping to understand how a complex set of causes united to lead to the near-collapse of global finance in 2008.' John Gapper, Associate Editor and Chief Business Commentator, Financial Times

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: Who is to Blame? 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.