Publisher's Synopsis
In this broad-ranging, deeply researched review of modern banking and financial systems, analysts David Buckham, Robyn Wilkinson and Christiaan Straeuli unpick in parallel the ongoing erosion of trust in capitalist free markets and Western democratic institutions, and the directly related, unprecedented growth of the Chinese banking system. The former is a decades-long tale of intermittent market manipulation, inadequately regulated hubris and outright criminality, which produced the Global Financial Crisis, the most devastating financial meltdown since the Great Depression. The latter, which in various ways mirrors the conditions that led to the Crisis, may well prove worse.