Raghuram Rajan wins FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award

Lionel barber, Raghuram Rajan and LLoyd BlankfienRaghuram G Rajan won the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs’ Business Book of the Year Award 2010 for Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy, published by Princeton University Press, which analyses the flaws in the economy that led to the current financial crisis, and warns of changes essential for economic recovery.

The Award was presented recently at a dinner in New York by Lionel Barber, editor, Financial Times, and Lloyd C Blankfein, chairman and chief executive officer, Goldman Sachs. The keynote speaker was Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Rajan saw off strong competition to win the £30,000 prize.  The Award, which was established in the year 2005, aims to find the book that provides ‘the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues.’  Each of the five runners-up received a cheque for £10,000, an increase of £5,000 over previous years, and can expect heightened interest in their influential books.

In Fault Lines, Rajan demonstrates how unequal access to education and health care in the United States puts the whole of the US in deeper financial peril, even as the economic choices of countries like Germany, Japan, and China place an undue burden on America to get its policies right. He outlines the hard choices we need to make to ensure a more stable world economy and restore lasting prosperity.

Lionel Barber said of the winning title, “Fault Lines is a comprehensive analysis of what went wrong, but it is also only the beginning of the conversation. Rajan offers insights into how to correct the flaws in financial capitalism and illuminates difficult choices in public policy. It is a serious and sober book, but in these times sobriety is a virtue.”