The book identifies the origin of the crisis in the complex interaction between globalization, hugely destabilizing global imbalances and our dangerously fragile financial system. In the eurozone, these sources of instability were multiplied by the tragically defective architecture of the monetary union. It also shows how much of the orthodoxy that shaped monetary and financial policy before the crisis occurred was complacent and wrong. In doing so, it mercilessly reveals the failures of the financial, political and intellectual elites who ran the system.

The book also examines what has been done to reform the financial and monetary systems since the worst of the crisis passed. “Are we now on a sustainable course?” Wolf asks. “The answer is no.” He explains with great clarity why “further crises seem certain” and why the management of the eurozone in particular “guarantees a huge political crisis at some point in the future.” Wolf provides far more ambitious and comprehensive plans for reform than any currently being implemented