The Meltdown Years offers the most lucid and useful explanation to date about why home values, life savings, job security, and investments around the world are in peril.

Rather than focus on who is to blame, though, author Wolfgang Munchau takes the more practical approach of focusing on what is to blame. The fact that individuals were stupid, greedy, and corrupt should come as no surprise. What's remarkable is that our world's financial systems--put in place to help stave off such a crisis--failed so miserably.

What is inherently wrong with the global...