Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World

by Adam Tooze

own domestic stimulus and monetary policy programs. Through discreet diplomacy and the Fed’s massive liquidity programs, it had helped Europe across its worst crisis since the end of World War II. Americanization was the answer. Nor were the exponents of US economic policy shy about trumpeting their achievements. The Courage to Act would be the title of Bernanke’s memoir. The melodrama caused his more bashful European colleagues to wince. It was not the kind of language one associates with the recollections of an academic economist turned central banker. Other, more academic titles in the wake of the 2012 stabilization echoed the general mood of optimism. In the end, it had turned out to be a Status Quo Crisis.65 The System Worked.66 The global economy had survived and America had reasserted a new version of liberal hegemony. Europe resumed the forward march to a United States of Europe it had begun under American guidance in 1947. Among academic commentators, a cottage industry grew up on both sides of the Atlantic benchmarking Europe’s new efforts at integration against American history. Was Europe still at the Philadelphia stage, or was a Hamilton moment on the horizon?67 It was, one should add, a reasonable assessment, certainly if one stopped the clock in November 2012 and if one skated over America’s unfortunate role in 2010 in endorsing the first round of extend-and-pretend. This narrative was also, in the American context, a thoroughly political one. As Geithner ac...