The 2007 and 2008 crisis in world economics and financial markets have spawned many books. This is one book that talks about the same crisis but perhaps in a much more insightful way than any other. Dwelling on the interplay between economic policies and financial markets this book is difficult t... ...more

This is another excellent addition to a library of very good books that came about after the official end of free-market capitalism on 9/18/08.

The mathematics of economics are the most surprising part at the beginning of this book, and you get the sense that John Cassidy introduces them to show h... ...more

This is officially the fourth book I've read about the market crises of 2008. I can probably tell you more about CDOS, ABS, MBS, and CDSs than you'd ever want to know and I'm not even an economics major. This particular book is a fantastic, insightful examination of the general, underlying theori... ...more

Brilliant analysis of how we stick to limited theories(Utopian Economics) and repeat our mistakes ... we should allow ourselves to research and study all different Economic theories. ...more

I started reading this a while back as an audiobook almost on a whim on a particularly bad traffic day on I-90. I'm finally done and I think I got what I was expecting to get out of the book. Perhaps my biases on economic philosophies line up with the author's, it was very interesting. I'd recomm... ...more

Every once in awhile, a book comes along and changes the way you think. John Cassidy’s How Markets Fail is one of those books.

Though I stake no claims in the American political partisan system, I have always believed in the free market. It’s what I was taught in college. Other theories and model... ...more

Great book. Well researched and historical describing how our free market economic policies have lead us through generations of bubbles, crisis, and other financial crisis. He reviews Adam Smith, Hayek, Milton Friedman and others. Cassidy is a journalist and economist who writes for the New Yorke... ...more

Bowing and scraping before the altar of orthodox Keynesianism to an embarassing degree does not make you wrong. Nor does it make you right. It simply makes you irritating. Especially when the facts muddy your nifty theory, as when the author ignores several commentators who ALSO predicted a housi... ...more

This book is about the ideas and ideology that ultimately led to the current financial crisis. I would call the first two parts good summaries of econ classes I have taken, minus the fact that I don’t think he gave free market theory a fair shake. By pitting “Utopian Economics” against “Reality-B... ...more

I am glad I did not major in economics. Four, six or eight years of economics study and I would have been taught erroneous information like the efficiency of the invisible hand and equilibrium theory. This book is about a major blindspot economists had: the theory that the market would work all t... ...more