Review Essay The Global Financial Crisis: Views from Asia Amitava Krishna Dutt Michael Lim Mah-hui and Lim Chin, Nowhere to Hide: The Great Financial Crisis and Challenges for Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2010. 174 pp. £ 23.48 Y.V. Reddy, Global Crisis, Recession and Uneven Recovery. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2011. 421 pp. £ 23.47 Much has been written about the financial and economic crisis that has engulfed so many countries and the global economy since 2007–08. The causes of the crisis have been widely discussed and debated in the aca- demic literature, policy circles and popular press, and have been located in the inherent instability of financial markets, failures of financial regula- tion, financial ‘innovation’, greed, failures of macroeconomic policy, macro- economic imbalances such as increases in consumer debt and current account deficits, rising inequality, political-economy factors such as the rise in power of financial interests, and the global financial and economic system with free capital movements and the dollar as the hegemonic international payments and reserve currency. The consequences of the financial meltdown for output, growth, unem- ployment and poverty have also been extensively analysed. Many policy responses have been recommended and adopted, including the government takeover of banks, tightening of financial regulation, bailing out of financial institutions, expansionary monetary and fiscal policy and capital controls. There has even been a fair amount of criticism of the economics profession, especially of mainstream or neoclassical economic analysis, for its general failure to predict or even anticipate the crisis, its advocacy of excessive financial deregulation and its general support of free market policies. Since the effects of the crisis continue to linger, and recovery is far from assured in many parts of the world, especially in the US and the Eurozone, the discussions and debates continue. The early criticisms of economic anal- ysis and free market policies have become considerably muted, as the spectre of inflation and rising government debt has been raised, as the worst fears have subsided, and as free market ideology has gained ascendancy and Development and Change 44(1): 175–187. DOI: 10.1111/dech.12005 C  2013 International Institute of Social Studies. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA