Who Runs Britain? How the Super-Rich are Changing our Lives
On 13 September 2007, Robert Peston broke the news that Northern Rock had become a victim of the global credit crunch and was seeking an emergency loan from the Bank of England.
It was the latest in a long line of scoops by this award-winning journalist. Over the weeks that followed, the Government found itself exposed to the Rock to the tune of 57 billion or almost £2,000 for every taxpayer.
As Robert Peston shows in his fascinating new book, the seeds for the collapse of Northern Rock and the upheavals in the financial markets were sown years before. Who Runs Britain? is the first time anyone has drawn all the threads together to weave a story that is rich in extraordinary characters and outrageous feats of economic bravado.
This book is about the widening gap between the super-rich and the rest of us. It explores and explodes the myth that the financial creativity of those who are amassing these vast fortunes is good for the wider economy and for all of us.
Reviews
“The villain of Peston’s piece is not the market but its political custodians. This book is a catalogue of cluelessness on the part of Blair, Brown and their advisers, on everything from pension funds, capital taxes and non-domiciles to the wider shores of private equity. The much-vaunted Treasury was most clueless of all.”
The Sunday Times
