Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World

by Adam Tooze

In a remarkable series of articles following the 2012 election, Paul Krugman at the New York Times adopted a profoundly dark view of American society, economy and politics. “What do the pre- and postcrisis consensuses have in common?” Krugman asked in December 2013.32 “Both were economically destructive: Deregulation helped make the crisis possible, and the premature turn to fiscal austerity has done more than anything else to hobble recovery. Both consensuses, however, corresponded to the interests and prejudices of an economic elite whose political influence had surged along with its wealth. . . . Some pundits [might wish to] depoliticize our economic discourse, to make it technocratic and nonpartisan. But that’s a pipe dream. Even on what may look like purely technocratic issues, class and inequality end up shaping—and distorting—the debate.” This from a Nobel Prize–winning economist who in the 1980s and 1990s had counted squarely in the mainstream.