Review Of Between Debt And The Devil

Summary

A review of Between Debt and the Devil, by Adair Turner.

The book looks beyond superficial issues concerning global debt to deeper causes.

It points to the many researchers and organizations offering viable solutions.

Between Debt and the Devil, by Adair Turner, Princeton University Press, 2015

Author Adair Turner, former Chair of the Financial Services Authority, the top UK financial overseer, clearly lays out the deeper reform of global finance so far avoided since the crises of 2008 and the still painful aftermath. The title sums up the book’s theme: between the hazards of global debt overhang and the tempting alternative – creating fiat money. Turner correctly reviews in early chapters the nature of the 2008 debacle and its roots in excessive private credit creation, inadequate policy responses, obsolete economic models, limited theoretical diagnoses, inefficient financial markets, perverse incentives and efforts of central bankers to substitute monetary policy for deficient fiscal tools and political will.

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