Economics

Four years ago, we learn from this book’s jack- et, Malcolm Glad- well ‘was named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People’. Four years ago, we learn from this book’s jacket, Malcolm Gladwell ‘was named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People’. As Gladwell himself might ask, ‘Is what Time says really significant? And what is significant?’ Gladwell is significant, all right. Not only is he a staff writer on the New Yorker but he wrote the bestsellers Blink and The Tipping Point that made him millions and — here is more significance — put him number one on the New York Times’ bestseller lists. What is Gladwell’s secret?

Fool’s Gold, by Gillian Tett Millions of words and scores of official reports on the credit crisis have poured out. There has been no shortage of criticism, especially from political leaders eager to deflect responsibility from themselves. The catastrophe is a man-made disaster, and in years to come historians will ask how it could possibly have been allowed to happen. Gillian Tett’s Fool’s Gold is the book they will turn to. The story she tells reveals in painful detail how credit derivatives came to be invented and then misused on an unimaginable scale. It is a thriller. The idea emerged from a wild weekend party of J. P. Morgan ‘rocket scientists’ (as they used to be called) in 1994 at Boca Raton, a Florida resort.

With the economy in recession, the close attentions of the IMF, taxation rising to punitive levels and a general sense of our having lived beyond our means, reminders of the 1970s are all around us at present. Last week, both the death of the union leader Jack Jones and Alistair Darling’s extraordinary budget in their different ways took us back to the atmosphere of 30 years ago. Andy Beckett’s history of the political engagement of those years comes at a highly opportune time. He rightly focuses not on the familiar popular culture — there is no mention of flared trousers, the Osmonds, platform shoes or space-hoppers — but on the much stranger political landscape of the time.

There is only one politician who has emerged from the recession with his reputation enhanced. Yes, you’ve guessed right: I’m referring to Vince Cable, the ubiquitous grey-haired, sober-suited deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats. Even many Tories would feel reassured were Cable, who exudes reasonableness, to become Chancellor; broadcasters with little understanding of finance defer to him, with the BBC treating him as a cross between a living saint and a Nobel laureate in economics. A former chief economist at Shell, he is always at the other end of a mobile phone; journalists know they can count on better copy talking to him than anything on offer from the Tories.