Will Hutton has reviewed Meltdown for the Guardian Review, as part of the usual quartet of credit crunch books. Read the review here: a long and thoughtful piece by somebody who is as much a player as a commentator within the Labour economics hierarchy. He writes:
"Mason is refreshingly clear-eyed about the operation of today's finance-driven capitalism - and angry. It wasn't only that the banks and insurance companies campaigned to have the law changed to serve their interests with such disastrous results. Sometimes, as with AIG, they began to transgress the law. AIG admitted in 2005 that it had faked $500m of transactions to fool the auditors, and "misclassified" another $3bn to inflate its profits. I have no doubt that there are more instances that may never come to light. Britain has insured £585bn of bank loans. It is hard to believe that every penny of bad debt on such a scale was just honest misjudgment. Do we believe that the British were angels and the only frauds American?"
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