Guardians of Finance: Making Regulators Work for Us - Hardcover

This book will become a classic for those who want to learn what was behind the global financial crisis -- not just what went wrong, but why current reforms won't work. Most important, it offers guidelines to prevent the next crisis by forcing regulators, the Guardians of Finance, to work for the public interest rather than for narrow elites.

This book involves a strongly, even passionately, argued attack on financial regulators for having made a mess of financial regulation, prior to 2007. It is beautifully written, and very well designed to achieve a wide audience of readers who are interested in the crisis, but are not necessarily themselves expert. It is based on great academic expertise, but wears its deep scholarship lightly, with no maths and no equations.

There have been plenty of books on the financial crisis. But this one is different. While acknowledging that private financiers did plenty of damage, the authors shine the spotlight on regulators across the world. They argue that the crisis did not just happen to policymakers, it happened because of them, and offer careful and well-reasoned arguments to support their case. Guardians of Finance should be read by everyone interested in the future of free enterprise.

Financial crises are not in the interests of bankers, regulators, or politicians. Yet all three groups did nothing as the U.S. financial system headed over a cliff. Why didn't they act? Why did their counterparts in other countries, such as Ireland and Iceland, also stick their heads in the sand? Is there a way to prevent the next crisis, or do we have to rely on the same groups that brought us the ongoing disaster of 2007? Read this meticulously researched and clearly argued book, and learn the answers.

This is a timely, well-written, and nontechnical book by established experts in the field.

For those involved in policy formulation and regulation, whether at national or international level, in government or financial institutions, this is compulsory reading.