Best books 2009
Our contributors name their favourite reads of the year
Fraser Nelson
Financial Fiasco: How America's Infatuation with Home Ownership and Easy Money Created the Economic Crisis
Johan Norberg
Cato Institute , 208 pages
Ever since the crash, I have been waiting for Johan Norberg to write about it – and finally, this year, he has obliged. I have three copies of his first book, In Defence of Globalisation, with varying degrees of annotation. I have already started to deface Financial Fiasco, his book showing how governments created this mess. The American government pumped up the housing bubble – and then there was a collective delusion that the market was rational. As Norberg says, the market is no more than a collection of humans who fall prey to hubris. And their hubris was imagining that computer models had eliminated risk: that the boom would not be followed by a bust. He quotes Warren Buffett, warning of ' Geeks bearing formulas'. Reading Norberg, it's horribly clear that the problem British and American policymakers are addressing is bonuses: but the blame lies elsewhere, and – in this rush of banker bashing – remains unaddressed.
Janice Warman
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