Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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168 of 173 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Vince in Wonderland, 2 April 2009
Dr Vince Cable comments more than once in his book that the global economy seems to have become an "Alice in Wonderland" world: poor countries lending billions to finance the rich countries' borrowing, housing bubbles and see-sawing commodity prices all make for a surreal picture of the mess we have got ourselves into. In The Storm, Dr Cable makes the crisis understandable to a much broader readership than that of the Financial Times or The Economist; he has made an invaluable contribution to public understanding of this historic turning point.
The first two chapters of the book explain the "credit crunch", first in Britain then globally. These are followed by an excellent chapter on the surge in oil prices (no doubt helped by his experience as Chief Economist for Shell between 1995 and 1997) and another chapter on the food crisis. These are timely reminders that the problem of resources has not disappeared, even though it has been totally submerged in the news by the tottering banks and insurers. The fifth chapter puts the crisis in the context of the emergence of new economic powerhouses (principally China and India) and explains how they will reshape the world economy.
Throughout the book Dr Cable is unafraid of making judgements, but modestly restricts political points-scoring to a brief mention of his warnings about unsustainable house-price inflation in the UK (as economic spokesman for the Liberal Democrats he warned of this as early as 2002). Nevertheless, his conviction that the liberal economic system must be preserved, though with reforms, shines through in the final two chapters covering the responses to the crisis so far and his "road map" out of it.
All in all this is the indispensible introduction to the greatest economic upheaval in decades. For those who want to read further Dr Cable provides a very helpful bibliographic note. This book is required reading for anyone who wants to get their head round the crisis.
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35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Rushed but relevant, 19 April 2009
There are three factors that make Vince Cable worth listening to (or reading):
First, he is near the centre of the political establishment. Second he is neither in power, nor about to be. This makes him honest.
Thirdly, and most importantly, he is clever.
With this book, Cable presents a (necessarily) rushed account of the financial crisis, how it happened and what it means for the future. And most importantly, for him at least, what this means in terms of the required policies.
It is, unavoidably, a political manifesto, but the politics are spread thinly enough to be palatable.
The best histories of the crisis will not be written for some time, but this is a welcome and compact reminder of where we have been. A year ago we were debating whether a 'credit crunch' would spread to the 'real' economy. Six months ago we were genuinely on the brink of a complete banking collapse. Now we are in a deep recession, which back at the start of the crunch, barely anyone predicted.
Cable is not a main player in the saga, so there are no revelations, but he is a well-informed and intelligent observer that has something to say. Even if you do not agree with his politics, this is a book well worth reading.
Four stars.
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clarity, Balance and Sanity about the Economic Crisis, 4 May 2009
In simple clear English, Vince Cable unravels the causes of the present global recession and puts it in its historical context. Greed and speculation have always been with us; what's new is its scale and the speed of transmission around the world, owing to globalisation of business and the impact of modern technology
Cable makes a valuable distinction between Free Trade in goods and services, which he supports, and unregulated speculation in financial services. As Keynes put it "Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise...But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation." and this is what has been allowed to happen as a result of de-regulation or 'light touch' regulation. Speculators, like punters in a casino, do not create net wealth - for every winner there is a loser. But today's financial speculators do not gamble with their own money but with ours (savers, pension funds and increasingly, in the 'bail-out', with taxpayers' money too)
Cable is in favour of Government action to stabilise the financial system and stop the real economy sliding into depression, by public investment in worhwhile infrastructure projects and boosting consumer spending power, but he stresses the dangers of socialising losses and leaving the profits in private hands
If the book has a weakness, it stems from Cable's background as an oil industry economist. I think he is unduly sanguine about the dangers of Peak Oil and the environmental costs of developing uncoventional sources of supply. In fact, climate change and its relationship to conventional economic growth objectives hardly features at all - a serious omission
But for a book written 'on the hoof' by an active politician in the thick of the crisis he is analysing, it is a remarkable achievement - lucid,sane,and balanced
Vincent Nolan
4 May 2009
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