How to understand the human side of a financial crisis: read a book

One of the occupational pleasures, and occasional hazards, of being a financial journalist is the need to keep up with your reading.

I’ve consumed a stack of books about the financial crisis and its aftermath, including Michael Lewis’s The Big Short and Vicky Ward’s riveting account of the downfall of Lehman Brothers, Devil’s Casino, notable for its portrayal of the designer clad bankers’ WAGs, whose minutely-observed social hierarchy mirrored the ups and downs of their husband’s careers.

(At a City dinner a few years ago I sat next to a former Lehman banker who appeared fairly prominently in the book – to my amusement, he was not remotely mortified but boasted loudly about being in it.)

For a devastating critique of over-leveraged banks, you can do no better than The Bankers’ New Clothes by Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig. And even if you have zero per cent interest in central bankers, Liaquat Ahamed’s Lords of Finance: The Bankers who Broke the World, is a work of sheer genius.