● The Road to Recovery: How and Why Economic Policy Must Change
By Andrew Smithers
Review via The Financial Times
Although he is about as far from a leftwing populist banker-basher as it is possible to imagine, this book is a startling and authoritative attack on the system of tying executives’ bonuses to the share-price performance of their companies.
For Smithers, the bonus system was the principal cause of the financial crisis, and is now the main reason why the recovery has been so weak. He establishes this claim meticulously, with a plethora of charts, and looks for alternative explanations. (He accepts that greater concentration, or lack of competition, could be an important factor.)
