Book of the week: Beyond the Crash by Gordon Brown

(Free Press, $26)

Gordon Brown’s insider account of the 2008 crash deserves a second look, said Iain Macwhirter in the Glasgow, Scotland, Herald. The former British prime minister’s “dramatic retelling” seemed to go straight from its December launch to the remainder bin, a “quite extraordinary” fate given Brown’s central role in ensuring that the developed world survived its “greatest economic crisis in 80 years.” Part of his message here is that banks were clueless about the risks they had taken, which is why he believes the systemic flaws revealed by the crisis are far from fixed. But if Brown’s view ought to be heard, he also indulges in too much “finger-wagging and self-exculpation” to light the way forward, said Alex Massie in Bloomberg Businessweek. When he tells us that “the operation of markets must balance the necessary encouragement of risk-taking with proper standards of responsibility,” that’s just a platitude. What exactly he means “appears left for the sequel.”

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