Mutual trust is an essential element of a globalized economy, and a market economy without trust leads only to further disaster. If we want to ensure future stability, Geoffrey Hosking argues, we must first understand the characteristics of this trust relationship - and to that end he provides tools to seek out where socio-economic trust has been misplaced and where it can be strengthened positively for the future. Social and economic trust in the United Kingdom and the United States waned in the 1990s and exploded into a major crisis of economic distrust in the form of the credit crunch that began in 2007. The crisis, argues Hosking, was the result of a bubble of trust misplaced in financial markets and state welfare systems by individuals, companies, and governments alike. He carefully and approachably explains that the roots of this crisis go back more than three centuries, but its symptoms greatly intensified as governments deregulated financial markets in the 1980s.
