Three Important Finance Books for This Fall

Kay doesn’t care what the markets think. “Any notion that traders have interesting insights into the formation of economic policy is quickly dispelled by the slightest contact with them,” the U.K. economist writes in a typically droll paragraph in his devastating new book about the world financial system. The problem, Kay says, is that the industry represents a huge segment of the world economy, and yet its actual contributions to it are impossible to discern, thanks to a mind-boggling complexity that fosters instability and too often ignores the actual customers (you know, those “other people”). The solution, he argues, is not increased regulation, already too voluminous, but a rethinking of the entire financial order. With a flair for metaphor, Kay’s occasionally academic prose is well worth the time. Wall Street, it’s safe to say, will not like it.