Book Review: The Storm - Vince Cable

On the cover of this book Vince Cable is described by Rory Bremner as “the man who gives politics a good name”. He is one of the few people, politicians and others, to come out of the credit crunch with his reputation not just intact but enhanced.

You’d think therefore that this book would tell you everything you need to know about the credit crunch, written as it is by the one of the few people to recognise the warning signals from excessive borrowing by consumers and governments.

Readers expecting that story will be disappointed. The book starts off reasonably well describing Trouble on the Tyne and the Northern Rock affair, and moves on to discuss the growth in credit in the UK and the factors behind it. As you’d expect from a seasoned economist, the author writes as he speaks in a very clear style.

However, from the third chapter the book turns to covering general macro economic factors including the significance of oil in the global economy, food shortages and prices, international trade and the emergence of China and India as powerful economies. Surprisingly for a text on macroeconomics it’s very readable and very interesting but it’s not actually about the credit crunch.

Unfortunately, it looks as if the author was already writing a book about macroeconomic conditions and has then hurriedly tacked on some chapters about the credit crunch in a rather unconvincing manner. The grammar is poor on occasions, assumptions are made when names of people are used without detailing who they are or their significance, and the various factual errors such as referring to the notorious Sir Fred Goodwin of RBS as Frank Godwin detract from the overall reading experience.

All in all this is a surprising book for a number of reasons. Surprising that the author would allow such a hurried text to be approved by him, surprising that it’s not about what it claims to be about, and surprising in that the content is actually quite a good read.

Ash Mehta