Too bad Tom Wood’s Meltdown wasn’t on the list, nor was any Austrian explanation.
A while back, the MIT economist Andrew Lo set out to review a couple books about the financial crisis. Those books led to a couple more books, which led — you see where this is going — to 17 more books.
Now, Lo is about to publish “Reading About The Financial Crisis: A 21-Book Review” (PDF).
Reading 21 books about the financial crisis does not sound, on its face, like a fun experience. After you talk to Lo, it sounds even worse.
“After each book, I felt like I knew less,” he told me. “For an academic, that’s a pretty frustrating feeling.”
Lo read widely. Idea books by economists, newsy books by journalists. An 800-year history of financial crises. (The full list is on pp. 4-5 of the review.)
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