The Treasury is one of Britain’s oldest, most powerful and secretive institutions, one that has played a central role in shaping the country’s economic system. But all too often it has escaped public scrutiny when it comes to investigating the ups and downs of the UK economy.
When portrayed, it is usually as a bedrock of government stability in times of crisis, repeatedly rescuing the nation’s finances from the hands of posturing politicians and the combustions of world financial markets. However, there is another side to the story. In between the highs there have been many lows, from botched privatizations to dubious private finance initiatives, from failing to spot the great financial crisis to facilitating ever-growing inequalities.
Davis’s book goes behind the scenes to offer an inside history of the Treasury, in the words of the chancellors, advisors and civil servants themselves. It shows the shortcomings as well as the successes, the personalities and the thinking which have shaped Britain’s economy since the mid-1970s. Based on interviews with over fifty key figures, it offers a fascinating, alternative insight on how and why the UK economy came to function as it does today, and why reform is long overdue.
Mục lục
1 Introduction: The Treasury as saviour?
2 Creative destruction and the road to nowhere: A microeconomists’ story
3 Financialization not neoliberalism: The City’s Trojan Horse enters the Treasury
4 Pseudo-Keynesianism, debt and magic money trees: The financial fixers come to town
5 Visions of Empire and globalisation: Rise of the internationalists
6 The great financial crash and the great failed paradigm shift: A technocrats’ tale
7 Austerity, spin, and the road to Brexit: Posh boys take charge
8 Brexit and Covid postscript: Reckless opportunists gain control
9 Conclusions: An institutional perspective on UK economic history
List of interviewees
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Index
Giới thiệu về tác giả
Aeron Davis is Professor of Political Communication at Victoria University of Wellington. He is the author of seven previous books, including
Reckless Opportunists: Elites at the End of the Establishment. His work has appeared in the
Financial Times, the
Daily Telegraph,
Times Higher Education, the
New Statesman, the
Guardian and elsewhere.
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