A debt-filled New Year

The Spectator is out today, with a cover story that I would commend to CoffeeHousers. Failure to learn from history usually condemns a nation to repeating its mistakes. That’s why we should be nervous that no one seems to have worked out what caused the crash. Little wonder: the guys doing the analysis are the same guys who failed to spot the crisis building up, so it suits everyone to blame the banks. “How was I to know,” says everyone from Gordon Brown to Joe the Pundit, “that they were doing all these complex debt swap thingies? They deceived everyone, the bounders.” There is another analysis – and it’s our cover story, written by Johan Norberg. He has been making his case in a short film (trailer here, if you can stand Brown’s cameo) and a book (for my money, the best written about the crisis). I thought CoffeeHousers may be interested in the bones of his argument – which I flesh out, below.